asant-proprietors described as a pig-headed lot; had heard young Mont
call his father a pig-headed Morning Poster--disrespectful young devil.
Well, there were worse things than being pig-headed or reading The
Morning Post. There was Profond and his tribe, and all these Labour
chaps, and loud-mouthed politicians, and "wild, wild women"! A lot of
worse things! And, suddenly, Soames became conscious of feeling weak,
and hot, and shaky. Sheer nerves at the meeting before him! As Aunt
Juley might have said--quoting "Superior Dosset"--his nerves were "in a
proper fantigue." He could see the house now among its trees, the house
he had watched being built, intending it for himself and this woman,
who, by such strange fate, had lived in it with another after all! He
began to think of Dumetrius, Local Loans, and other forms of
investment. He could not afford to meet her with his nerves all
shaking; he who represented the Day of Judgment for her on earth as it
was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified, meeting lawless
beauty, incarnate. His dignity demanded impassivity during this embassy
designed to link their offspring, who, if she had behaved herself,
would have been brother and sister. That wretched tune: "The Wild Wild
Women" kept running in his head, perversely, for tunes did not run
there as a rule. Passing the poplars in front of the house, he thought:
'How they've grown; I had them planted!'

A maid answered his ring.

"Will you say--Mr. Forsyte, on a very special matter."

If she realised who he was, quite probably she would not see him. 'By
George!' he thought, hardening as the tug came: 'It's a topsyturvy
affair!'

The maid came back. Would the gentleman state his business, please?

"Say it concerns Mr. Jon," said Soames.

And once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of grey-white
marble designed by her first lover. Ah! she had been a bad lot--had
loved two men, and not himself! He must remember that when he came face
to face with her once more. And suddenly he saw her in the opening
chink between the long heavy purple curtains, swaying, as if in
hesitation; the old perfect poise and line, the old startled dark-eyed
gravity; the old calm defensive voice: "Will you come in, please?"

He passed through that opening. As in the picture-gallery and the
confectioner's shop, she seemed to him still beautiful. And this was
the first time--the very first--since he married her five and thirty
years ago, th