a smile, of his family and their
surprise at a French wife, and their curiosity, and of the way he would
play with it and buffet it confound them!

The, poplars sighed in the darkness; an owl hooted. Shadows deepened in
the water. 'I will and must be free,' he thought. 'I won't hang about
any longer. I'll go and see Irene. If you want things done, do them
yourself. I must live again--live and move and have my being.' And in
echo to that queer biblicality church-bells chimed the call to evening
prayer.

CHAPTER XI

AND VISITS THE PAST

On a Tuesday evening after dining at his club Soames set out to do what
required more courage and perhaps less delicacy than anything he had yet
undertaken in his life--save perhaps his birth, and one other action. He
chose the evening, indeed, partly because Irene was more likely to be in,
but mainly because he had failed to find sufficient resolution by
daylight, had needed wine to give him extra daring.

He left his hansom on the Embankment, and walked up to the Old Church,
uncertain of the block of flats where he knew she lived. He found it
hiding behind a much larger mansion; and having read the name, 'Mrs.
Irene Heron'--Heron, forsooth! Her maiden name: so she used that again,
did she?--he stepped back into the road to look up at the windows of the
first floor. Light was coming through in the corner fiat, and he could
hear a piano being played. He had never had a love of music, had secretly
borne it a grudge in the old days when so often she had turned to her
piano, making of it a refuge place into which she knew he could not
enter. Repulse! The long repulse, at first restrained and secret, at
last open! Bitter memory came with that sound. It must be she playing,
and thus almost assured of seeing her, he stood more undecided than ever.
Shivers of anticipation ran through him; his tongue felt dry, his heart
beat fast. 'I have no cause to be afraid,' he thought. And then the
lawyer stirred within him. Was he doing a foolish thing? Ought he not
to have arranged a formal meeting in the presence of her trustee? No!
Not before that fellow Jolyon, who sympathised with her! Never! He
crossed back into the doorway, and, slowly, to keep down the beating of
his heart, mounted the single flight of stairs and rang the bell. When
the door was opened to him his sensations were regulated by the scent
which came--that perfume--from away back in the past, bringing muffl