comfort of his spring-mattressed bed.

Walking into the centre of the great empty drawing-room, he stood still.

A wife! Somebody to talk things over with. One had a right! Damn it!
One had a right!

PART III

CHAPTER I

SOAMES IN PARIS

Soames had travelled little. Aged nineteen he had made the 'petty tour'
with his father, mother, and Winifred--Brussels, the Rhine, Switzerland,
and home by way of Paris. Aged twenty-seven, just when he began to take
interest in pictures, he had spent five hot weeks in Italy, looking into
the Renaissance--not so much in it as he had been led to expect--and a
fortnight in Paris on his way back, looking into himself, as became a
Forsyte surrounded by people so strongly self-centred and 'foreign' as
the French. His knowledge of their language being derived from his
public school, he did not understand them when they spoke. Silence he
had found better for all parties; one did not make a fool of oneself. He
had disliked the look of the men's clothes, the closed-in cabs, the
theatres which looked like bee-hives, the Galleries which smelled of
beeswax. He was too cautious and too shy to explore that side of Paris
supposed by Forsytes to constitute its attraction under the rose; and as
for a collector's bargain--not one to be had! As Nicholas might have put
it--they were a grasping lot. He had come back uneasy, saying Paris was
overrated.

When, therefore, in June of 1900 he went to Paris, it was but his third
attempt on the centre of civilisation. This time, however, the mountain
was going to Mahomet; for he felt by now more deeply civilised than
Paris, and perhaps he really was. Moreover, he had a definite objective.
This was no mere genuflexion to a shrine of taste and immorality, but the
prosecution of his own legitimate affairs. He went, indeed, because
things were getting past a joke. The watch went on and on,
and--nothing--nothing! Jolyon had never returned to Paris, and no one
else was 'suspect!' Busy with new and very confidential matters, Soames
was realising more than ever how essential reputation is to a solicitor.
But at night and in his leisure moments he was ravaged by the thought
that time was always flying and money flowing in, and his own future as
much 'in irons' as ever. Since Mafeking night he had become aware that a
'young fool of a doctor' was hanging round Annette. Twice he had come
across him--a cheerful young fool, not more than th