happy
with this girl?"

Staring at her dark eyes, darker now from pain, Jon answered

"Yes; oh! yes--if you could be."

Irene smiled.

"Admiration of beauty and longing for possession are not love. If yours
were another case like mine, Jon--where the deepest things are stifled;
the flesh joined, and the spirit at war!"

"Why should it, Mother? You think she must be like her father, but she's
not. I've seen him."

Again the smile came on Irene's lips, and in Jon something wavered; there
was such irony and experience in that smile.

"You are a giver, Jon; she is a taker."

That unworthy doubt, that haunting uncertainty again! He said with
vehemence:

"She isn't--she isn't. It's only because I can't bear to make you
unhappy, Mother, now that Father--" He thrust his fists against his
forehead.

Irene got up.

"I told you that night, dear, not to mind me. I meant it. Think of
yourself and your own happiness! I can stand what's left--I've brought
it on myself."

Again the word "Mother!" burst from Jon's lips.

She came over to him and put her hands over his.

"Do you feel your head, darling?"

Jon shook it. What he felt was in his chest--a sort of tearing asunder
of the tissue there, by the two loves.

"I shall always love you the same, Jon, whatever you do. You won't lose
anything." She smoothed his hair gently, and walked away.

He heard the door shut; and, rolling over on the bed, lay, stifling his
breath, with an awful held-up feeling within him.

VII

EMBASSY

Enquiring for her at tea time Soames learned that Fleur had been out in
the car since two. Three hours! Where had she gone? Up to London
without a word to him? He had never become quite reconciled with cars.
He had embraced them in principle--like the born empiricist, or Forsyte,
that he was--adopting each symptom of progress as it came along with:
"Well, we couldn't do without them now." But in fact he found them
tearing, great, smelly things. Obliged by Annette to have one--a Rollhard
with pearl-grey cushions, electric light, little mirrors, trays for the
ashes of cigarettes, flower vases--all smelling of petrol and
stephanotis--he regarded it much as he used to regard his brother-in-law,
Montague Dartie. The thing typified all that was fast, insecure, and
subcutaneously oily in modern life. As modern life became faster,
looser, younger, Soames was becoming older, slower, tighter, more and
more in thought and