on view there. He went in to look
down his nose at them--it might give him some faint satisfaction. The
news had trickled through from June to Val's wife, from her to Val,
from Val to his mother, from her to Soames, that the house--the fatal
house at Robin Hill--was for sale, and Irene going to join her boy out
in British Columbia, or some such place. For one wild moment the
thought had come to Soames: 'Why shouldn't I buy it back? I meant it
for my--!' No sooner come than gone. Too lugubrious a triumph; with two
many humiliating memories for himself and Fleur. She would never live
there after what had happened. No, the place must go its way to some
peer or profiteer. It had been a bone of contention from the first, the
shell of the feud and with the woman gone, it was an empty shell. "For
Sale or To Let." With his mind's eye he could see that board raised
high above the ivied wall which he had built.

He passed through the first of the two rooms in the Gallery. There was
certainly a body of work! And now that the fellow was dead it did not
seem so trivial. The drawings were pleasing enough, with quite a sense
of atmosphere, and something individual in the brush work. 'His father
and my father; he and I; his child and mine!' thought Soames. So it had
gone on! And all about that woman! Softened by the events of the past
week, affected by the melancholy beauty of the autumn day, Soames came
nearer than he had ever been to realisation of that truth--passing the
understanding of a Forsyte pure--that the body of Beauty has a
spiritual essence, uncapturable save by a devotion which thinks not of
self. After all, he was near that truth in his devotion to his
daughter; perhaps that made him understand a little how he had missed
the prize. And there, among the drawings of his kinsman, who had
attained to that which he had found beyond his reach, he thought of him
and her with a tolerance which surprised him. But he did not buy a
drawing.

Just as he passed the seat of custom on his return to the outer air he
met with a contingency which had not been entirely absent from his mind
when he went into the Gallery--Irene, herself, coming in. So she had
not gone yet, and was still paying farewell visits to that fellow's
remains! He subdued the little involuntary leap of his
subconsciousness, the mechanical reaction of his senses to the charm of
this once-owned woman, and passed her with averted eyes. But when he
had gone by he could