man. I am sensible--that is all. And so will you be
when you have thought it over."

"I shall see this man," said Soames sullenly, "and warn him off."

"Mon cher, you are funny. You do not want me, you have as much of me as
you want; and you wish the rest of me to be dead. I admit nothing, but I
am not going to be dead, Soames, at my age; so you had better be quiet,
I tell you. I myself will make no scandal; none. Now, I am not saying
any more, whatever you do."

She reached out, took a French novel off a little table, and opened it.
Soames watched her, silenced by the tumult of his feelings. The thought
of that man was almost making him want her, and this was a revelation
of their relationship, startling to one little given to introspective
philosophy. Without saying another word he went out and up to the
picture-gallery. This came of marrying a Frenchwoman! And yet, without
her there would have been no Fleur! She had served her purpose.

'She's right,' he thought; 'I can do nothing. I don't even know that
there's anything in it.' The instinct of self-preservation warned him
to batten down his hatches, to smother the fire with want of air. Unless
one believed there was something in a thing, there wasn't.

That night he went into her room. She received him in the most
matter-of-fact way, as if there had been no scene between them. And he
returned to his own room with a curious sense of peace. If one didn't
choose to see, one needn't. And he did not choose--in future he did
not choose. There was nothing to be gained by it--nothing! Opening the
drawer he took from the sachet a handkerchief, and the framed photograph
of Fleur. When he had looked at it a little he slipped it down, and
there was that other one--that old one of Irene. An owl hooted while he
stood in his window gazing at it. The owl hooted, the red climbing roses
seemed to deepen in colour, there came a scent of lime-blossom. God!
That had been a different thing! Passion--Memory! Dust!

VII.--JUNE TAKES A HAND

One who was a sculptor, a Slav, a sometime resident in New York, an
egoist, and impecunious, was to be found of an evening in June Forsyte's
studio on the bank of the Thames at Chiswick. On the evening of July 6,
Boris Strumolowski--several of whose works were on show there because
they were as yet too advanced to be on show anywhere else--had begun
well, with that aloof and rather Christ-like silence which admirably
suited his youthful, ro