There were her dresses; he had always liked, indeed insisted, that she should be well-dressed—­she had taken very few; two or three at most, and drawer after drawer; full of linen and silk things, was untouched.

Perhaps after all it was only a freak, and she had gone to the seaside for a few days’ change.  If only that were so, and she were really coming back, he would never again do as he had done that fatal night before last, never again run that risk—­though it was her duty, her duty as a wife; though she did belong to him—­he would never again run that risk; she was evidently not quite right in her head!

He stooped over the drawer where she kept her jewels; it was not locked, and came open as he pulled; the jewel box had the key in it.  This surprised him until he remembered that it was sure to be empty.  He opened it.

It was far from empty.  Divided, in little green velvet compartments, were all the things he had given her, even her watch, and stuck into the recess that contained—­the watch was a three-cornered note addressed ‘Soames Forsyte,’ in Irene’s handwriting: 

‘I think I have taken nothing that you or your people have given me.’  And that was all.

He looked at the clasps and bracelets of diamonds and pearls, at the little flat gold watch with a great diamond set in sapphires, at the chains and rings, each in its nest, and the tears rushed up in his eyes and dropped upon them.

Nothing that she could have done, nothing that she had done, brought home to him like this the inner significance of her act.  For the moment, perhaps, he understood nearly all there was to understand—­understood that she loathed him, that she had loathed him for years, that for all intents and purposes they were like people living in different worlds, that there was no hope for him, never had been; even, that she had suffered—­that she was to be pitied.

In that moment of emotion he betrayed the Forsyte in him—­forgot himself, his interests, his property—­was capable of almost anything; was lifted into the pure ether of the selfless and unpractical.

Such moments pass quickly.

And as though with the tears he had purged himself of weakness, he got up, locked the box, and slowly, almost trembling, carried it with him into the other room.

CHAPTER VII

JUNE’S VICTORY

June had waited for her chance, scanning the duller columns of the journals, morning and evening with an assiduity which at first puzzled old Jolyon; and when her chance came, she took it with all the promptitude and resolute tenacity of her character.

She will always remember best in her life that morning when at last she saw amongst the reliable Cause List of the Times newspaper, under the heading of Court XIII, Mr. Justice Bentham, the case of Forsyte v.  Bosinney.

Like a gambler who stakes his last piece of money, she had prepared to hazard her all upon this throw; it was not her nature to contemplate defeat.  How, unless with the instinct of a woman in love, she knew that Bosinney’s discomfiture in this action was assured, cannot be told—­on this assumption, however, she laid her plans, as upon a certainty.