. He would surely
ask her to dance, and if he danced with her it would all be as it was
before. She looked about her eagerly.

The sight of Bosinney coming with Irene from the conservatory, with that
strange look of utter absorption on his face, struck her too suddenly.
They had not seen--no one should see--her distress, not even her
grandfather.

She put her hand on Jolyon's arm, and said very low:

"I must go home, Gran; I feel ill."

He hurried her away, grumbling to himself that he had known how it would
be.

To her he said nothing; only when they were once more in the carriage,
which by some fortunate chance had lingered near the door, he asked her:
"What is it, my darling?"

Feeling her whole slender body shaken by sobs, he was terribly alarmed.
She must have Blank to-morrow. He would insist upon it. He could not
have her like this.... There, there!

June mastered her sobs, and squeezing his hand feverishly, she lay back
in her corner, her face muffled in a shawl.

He could only see her eyes, fixed and staring in the dark, but he did not
cease to stroke her hand with his thin fingers.

CHAPTER IX

EVENING AT RICHMOND

Other eyes besides the eyes of June and of Soames had seen 'those two'
(as Euphemia had already begun to call them) coming from the
conservatory; other eyes had noticed the look on Bosinney's face.

There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the
careless calm of her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing white on
almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its
single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the flames of
sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery secret.

There are moments, too, when in a picture-gallery, a work, noted by the
casual spectator as '......Titian--remarkably fine,' breaks through the
defences of some Forsyte better lunched perhaps than his fellows, and
holds him spellbound in a kind of ecstasy. There are things, he
feels--there are things here which--well, which are things. Something
unreasoning, unreasonable, is upon him; when he tries to define it with
the precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the glow
of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him cross, and
conscious of his liver. He feels that he has been extravagant, prodigal
of something; virtue has gone out of him. He did not desire this glimpse
of what lay under the three sta