were any who would run risks for the sake of anything so
recondite, so figurative, as passion.

Passion! He seemed, indeed, to have heard of it, and rules such as 'A
young man and a young woman ought never to be trusted together' were
fixed in his mind as the parallels of latitude are fixed on a map (for
all Forsytes, when it comes to 'bed-rock' matters of fact, have quite a
fine taste in realism); but as to anything else--well, he could only
appreciate it at all through the catch-word 'scandal.'

Ah! but there was no truth in it--could not be. He was not afraid; she
was really a good little thing. But there it was when you got a thing
like that into your mind. And James was of a nervous temperament--one of
those men whom things will not leave alone, who suffer tortures from
anticipation and indecision. For fear of letting something slip that he
might otherwise secure, he was physically unable to make up his mind
until absolutely certain that, by not making it up, he would suffer loss.

In life, however, there were many occasions when the business of making
up his mind did not even rest with himself, and this was one of them.

What could he do? Talk it over with Soames? That would only make
matters worse. And, after all, there was nothing in it, he felt sure.

It was all that house. He had mistrusted the idea from the first. What
did Soames want to go into the country for? And, if he must go spending
a lot of money building himself a house, why not have a first-rate man,
instead of this young Bosinney, whom nobody knew anything about? He had
told them how it would be. And he had heard that the house was costing
Soames a pretty penny beyond what he had reckoned on spending.

This fact, more than any other, brought home to James the real danger of
the situation. It was always like this with these 'artistic' chaps; a
sensible man should have nothing to say to them. He had warned Irene,
too. And see what had come of it!

And it suddenly sprang into James's mind that he ought to go and see for
himself. In the midst of that fog of uneasiness in which his mind was
enveloped the notion that he could go and look at the house afforded him
inexplicable satisfaction. It may have been simply the decision to do
something--more possibly the fact that he was going to look at a
house--that gave him relief. He felt that in staring at an edifice of
bricks and mortar, of wood and stone, built by the suspected man him