Now, however, that such a thing—­or rather the rumour, the breath of it—­had come near him personally, he felt as in a fog, which filled his mouth full of a bad, thick flavour, and made it difficult to draw breath.

A scandal!  A possible scandal!

To repeat this word to himself thus was the only way in which he could focus or make it thinkable.  He had forgotten the sensations necessary for understanding the progress, fate, or meaning of any such business; he simply could no longer grasp the possibilities of people running any risk for the sake of passion.

Amongst all those persons of his acquaintance, who went into the City day after day and did their business there, whatever it was, and in their leisure moments bought shares, and houses, and ate dinners, and played games, as he was told, it would have seemed to him ridiculous to suppose that there were any who would run risks for the sake of anything so recondite, so figurative, as passion.

Passion!  He seemed, indeed, to have heard of it, and rules such as ’A young man and a young woman ought never to be trusted together’ were fixed in his mind as the parallels of latitude are fixed on a map (for all Forsytes, when it comes to ‘bed-rock’ matters of fact, have quite a fine taste in realism); but as to anything else—­well, he could only appreciate it at all through the catch-word ‘scandal.’

Ah! but there was no truth in it—­could not be.  He was not afraid; she was really a good little thing.  But there it was when you got a thing like that into your mind.  And James was of a nervous temperament—­one of those men whom things will not leave alone, who suffer tortures from anticipation and indecision.  For fear of letting something slip that he might otherwise secure, he was physically unable to make up his mind until absolutely certain that, by not making it up, he would suffer loss.

In life, however, there were many occasions when the business of making up his mind did not even rest with himself, and this was one of them.

What could he do?  Talk it over with Soames?  That would only make matters worse.  And, after all, there was nothing in it, he felt sure.

It was all that house.  He had mistrusted the idea from the first.  What did Soames want to go into the country for?  And, if he must go spending a lot of money building himself a house, why not have a first-rate man, instead of this young Bosinney, whom nobody knew anything about?  He had told them how it would be.  And he had heard that the house was costing Soames a pretty penny beyond what he had reckoned on spending.

This fact, more than any other, brought home to James the real danger of the situation.  It was always like this with these ‘artistic’ chaps; a sensible man should have nothing to say to them.  He had warned Irene, too.  And see what had come of it!