If it were still against the grain with her, had he not
feelings to subdue, injury to forgive, pain to forget? He at least had
never injured her, and this was a world of compromise! He could offer
her so much more than she had now. He would be prepared to make a
liberal settlement on her which could not be upset. He often scrutinised
his image in these days. He had never been a peacock like that fellow
Dartie, or fancied himself a woman's man, but he had a certain belief in
his own appearance--not unjustly, for it was well-coupled and preserved,
neat, healthy, pale, unblemished by drink or excess of any kind. The
Forsyte jaw and the concentration of his face were, in his eyes, virtues.
So far as he could tell there was no feature of him which need inspire
dislike.

Thoughts and yearnings, with which one lives daily, become natural, even
if far-fetched in their inception. If he could only give tangible proof
enough of his determination to let bygones be bygones, and to do all in
his power to please her, why should she not come back to him?

He entered Gaves and Cortegal's therefore, on the morning of November the
9th, to buy a certain diamond brooch. "Four twenty-five and dirt cheap,
sir, at the money. It's a lady's brooch." There was that in his mood
which made him accept without demur. And he went on into the Poultry
with the flat green morocco case in his breast pocket. Several times
that day he opened it to look at the seven soft shining stones in their
velvet oval nest.

"If the lady doesn't like it, sir, happy to exchange it any time. But
there's no fear of that." If only there were not! He got through a vast
amount of work, only soother of the nerves he knew. A cablegram came
while he was in the office with details from the agent in Buenos Aires,
and the name and address of a stewardess who would be prepared to swear
to what was necessary. It was a timely spur to Soames, with his rooted
distaste for the washing of dirty linen in public. And when he set forth
by Underground to Victoria Station he received a fresh impetus towards
the renewal of his married life from the account in his evening paper of
a fashionable divorce suit. The homing instinct of all true Forsytes in
anxiety and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and
solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane. He neither could nor would
breath a word to his people of his intention--too reticent and proud--but
the thought