ced on it a
conventional superstructure.

Thus the house had acquired a close resemblance to hundreds of other
houses with the same high aspirations, having become: 'That very
charming little house of the Soames Forsytes, quite individual, my
dear--really elegant.'

For Soames Forsyte--read James Peabody, Thomas Atkins, or Emmanuel
Spagnoletti, the name in fact of any upper-middle class Englishman
in London with any pretensions to taste; and though the decoration be
different, the phrase is just.

On the evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin Hill,
in the dining-room of this house--'quite individual, my dear--really
elegant'--Soames and Irene were seated at dinner. A hot dinner on
Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common to this house and
many others. Early in married life Soames had laid down the rule: 'The
servants must give us hot dinner on Sundays--they've nothing to do but
play the concertina.'

The custom had produced no revolution. For--to Soames a rather
deplorable sign--servants were devoted to Irene, who, in defiance of
all safe tradition, appeared to recognise their right to a share in the
weaknesses of human nature.

The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but rectangularly,
at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without a cloth--a
distinguishing elegance--and so far had not spoken a word.

Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had been
buying, and so long as he talked Irene's silence did not distress him.
This evening he had found it impossible to talk. The decision to build
had been weighing on his mind all the week, and he had made up his mind
to tell her.

His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had
no business to make him feel like that--a wife and a husband being
one person. She had not looked at him once since they sat down; and he
wondered what on earth she had been thinking about all the time. It was
hard, when a man worked as he did, making money for her--yes, and with
an ache in his heart--that she should sit there, looking--looking as if
she saw the walls of the room closing in. It was enough to make a man
get up and leave the table.

The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms--Soames
liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an inexpressible feeling
of superiority to the majority of his acquaintance, whose wives were
contented with their best high frocks or with te