e; but I am not a bad woman. I am sensible--that is all. And so will
you be when you have thought it over."

"I shall see this man," said Soames sullenly, "and warn him off."

"Mon cher, you are funny. You do not want me, you have as much of me as
you want; and you wish the rest of me to be dead. I admit nothing, but
I am not going to be dead, Soames, at my age; so you had better be
quiet, I tell you. I myself will make no scandal; none. Now, I am not
saying any more, whatever you do."

She reached out, took a French novel off a little table, and opened it.
Soames watched her, silenced by the tumult of his feelings. The thought
of that man was almost making him want her, and this was a revelation
of their relationship, startling to one little given to introspective
philosophy. Without saying another word he went out and up to the
picture-gallery. This came of marrying a Frenchwoman! And yet, without
her there would have been no Fleur! She had served her purpose.

'She's right,' he thought; 'I can do nothing. I don't even KNOW that
there's anything in it.' The instinct of self-preservation warned him
to batten down his hatches, to smother the fire with want of air.
Unless one believed there was something in a thing, there wasn't.

That night he went into her room. She received him in the most
matter-of-fact way, as if there had been no scene between them. And he
returned to his own room with a curious sense of peace. If one didn't
choose to see, one needn't. And he did not choose--in future he did not
choose. There was nothing to be gained by it--nothing! Opening the
drawer he took from the sachet a handkerchief, and the framed
photograph of Fleur. When he had looked at it a little he slipped it
down, and there was that other one--that old one of Irene. An owl
hooted while he stood in his window gazing at it. The owl hooted, the
red climbing roses seemed to deepen in colour, there came a scent of
lime-blossom. God! That had been a different thing! Passion--Memory!
Dust!

VII

JUNE TAKES A HAND

One who was a sculptor, a Slav, a sometime resident in New York, an
egoist, and impecunious, was to be found of an evening in June
Forsyte's studio on the bank of the Thames at Chiswick. On the evening
of July 6, Boris Strumolowski--several of whose works were on show
there because they were as yet too advanced to be on show anywhere
else--had begun well, with that aloof and rather Christlike silence
which admira