n sky, dusted with the
innumerable reflection of countless lamps; a dome woven over between
its stars with the refraction of human needs and human fancies--immense
mirror of pomp and misery that night after night stretches its kindly
mocking over miles of houses and gardens, mansions and squalor, over
Forsytes, policemen, and patient watchers in the streets.

Soames turned away, and, hidden in the recess, gazed into the lighted
room. It was cooler out there. He saw the new arrivals, June and her
grandfather, enter. What had made them so late? They stood by the
doorway. They looked fagged. Fancy Uncle Jolyon turning out at this
time of night! Why hadn't June come to Irene, as she usually did, and
it occurred to him suddenly that he had seen nothing of June for a long
time now.

Watching her face with idle malice, he saw it change, grow so pale that
he thought she would drop, then flame out crimson. Turning to see at
what she was looking, he saw his wife on Bosinney's arm, coming from
the conservatory at the end of the room. Her eyes were raised to his,
as though answering some question he had asked, and he was gazing at her
intently.

Soames looked again at June. Her hand rested on old Jolyon's arm; she
seemed to be making a request. He saw a surprised look on his uncle's
face; they turned and passed through the door out of his sight.

The music began again--a waltz--and, still as a statue in the recess of
the window, his face unmoved, but no smile on his lips, Soames waited.
Presently, within a yard of the dark balcony, his wife and Bosinney
passed. He caught the perfume of the gardenias that she wore, saw the
rise and fall of her bosom, the languor in her eyes, her parted lips,
and a look on her face that he did not know. To the slow, swinging
measure they danced by, and it seemed to him that they clung to each
other; he saw her raise her eyes, soft and dark, to Bosinney's, and drop
them again.

Very white, he turned back to the balcony, and leaning on it, gazed down
on the Square; the figures were still there looking up at the light with
dull persistency, the policeman's face, too, upturned, and staring, but
he saw nothing of them. Below, a carriage drew up, two figures got in,
and drove away....

That evening June and old Jolyon sat down to dinner at the usual hour.
The girl was in her customary high-necked frock, old Jolyon had not
dressed.

At breakfast she had spoken of the dance at Uncle Roger's, she wan