asked:

"Yes, Bosinney, what do you say?"

Bosinney replied coolly:

"The work is a remarkable one."

His words were addressed to Swithin, his eyes smiled slyly at old Jolyon;
only Soames remained unsatisfied.

"Remarkable for what?"

"For its naivete"

The answer was followed by an impressive silence; Swithin alone was not
sure whether a compliment was intended.

CHAPTER IV

PROJECTION OF THE HOUSE

Soames Forsyte walked out of his green-painted front door three days
after the dinner at Swithin's, and looking back from across the Square,
confirmed his impression that the house wanted painting.

He had left his wife sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, her hands
crossed in her lap, manifestly waiting for him to go out. This was not
unusual. It happened, in fact, every day.

He could not understand what she found wrong with him. It was not as if
he drank! Did he run into debt, or gamble, or swear; was he violent;
were his friends rackety; did he stay out at night? On the contrary.

The profound, subdued aversion which he felt in his wife was a mystery to
him, and a source of the most terrible irritation. That she had made a
mistake, and did not love him, had tried to love him and could not love
him, was obviously no reason.

He that could imagine so outlandish a cause for his wife's not getting on
with him was certainly no Forsyte.

Soames was forced, therefore, to set the blame entirely down to his wife.
He had never met a woman so capable of inspiring affection. They could
not go anywhere without his seeing how all the men were attracted by her;
their looks, manners, voices, betrayed it; her behaviour under this
attention had been beyond reproach. That she was one of those women--not
too common in the Anglo-Saxon race--born to be loved and to love, who
when not loving are not living, had certainly never even occurred to him.
Her power of attraction, he regarded as part of her value as his
property; but it made him, indeed, suspect that she could give as well as
receive; and she gave him nothing! 'Then why did she marry me?' was his
continual thought. He had, forgotten his courtship; that year and a half
when he had besieged and lain in wait for her, devising schemes for her
entertainment, giving her presents, proposing to her periodically, and
keeping her other admirers away with his perpetual presence. He had
forgotten the day when, adroitly taking advantage of an acute phase of