trust
himself? Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave of what he
adored? Could beauty be confided to him? Or should she not be just a
visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments which passed, to
return only at her own choosing? 'We are a breed of spoilers!' thought
Jolyon, 'close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us. Let
her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not.
Let me be just her stand-by, her perching-place; never-never her cage!'

She was the chink of beauty in his dream. Was he to pass through the
curtains now and reach her? Was the rich stuff of many possessions,
the close encircling fabric of the possessive instinct walling in that
little black figure of himself, and Soames--was it to be rent so that
he could pass through into his vision, find there something not of the
senses only? 'Let me,' he thought, 'ah! let me only know how not to
grasp and destroy!'

But at dinner there were plans to be made. To-night she would go back to
the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London. He must instruct
his solicitor--Jack Herring. Not a finger must be raised to hinder the
process of the Law. Damages exemplary, judicial strictures, costs, what
they liked--let it go through at the first moment, so that her neck
might be out of chancery at last! To-morrow he would see Herring--they
would go and see him together. And then--abroad, leaving no doubt, no
difficulty about evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth.
He looked round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more
than a woman was sitting there. The spirit of universal beauty, deep,
mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione, Botticelli, had
known how to capture and transfer to the faces of their women--this
flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her brow, her hair, her lips,
and in her eyes.

'And this is to be mine!' he thought. 'It frightens me!'

After dinner they went out on to the terrace to have coffee. They sat
there long, the evening was so lovely, watching the summer night
come very slowly on. It was still warm and the air smelled of lime
blossom--early this summer. Two bats were flighting with the faint
mysterious little noise they make. He had placed the chairs in front
of the study window, and moths flew past to visit the discreet light in
there. There was no wind, and not a whisper in the old oak-tree twenty
yards away! The moon rose from behind the copse,