Feeling her whole slender body shaken by sobs, he was terribly alarmed.  She must have Blank to-morrow.  He would insist upon it.  He could not have her like this....  There, there!

June mastered her sobs, and squeezing his hand feverishly, she lay back in her corner, her face muffled in a shawl.

He could only see her eyes, fixed and staring in the dark, but he did not cease to stroke her hand with his thin fingers.

CHAPTER IX

EVENING AT RICHMOND

Other eyes besides the eyes of June and of Soames had seen ‘those two’ (as Euphemia had already begun to call them) coming from the conservatory; other eyes had noticed the look on Bosinney’s face.

There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the careless calm of her ordinary moods—­violent spring flashing white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery secret.

There are moments, too, when in a picture-gallery, a work, noted by the
casual spectator as ‘......Titian--remarkably fine,’ breaks through the
defences of some Forsyte better lunched perhaps than his fellows, and
holds him spellbound in a kind of ecstasy.   There are things, he
feels—­there are things here which—­well, which are things.   Something
unreasoning, unreasonable, is upon him; when he tries to define it with
the precision of a practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the glow
of the wine he has drunk is slipping away, leaving him cross, and
conscious of his liver.   He feels that he has been extravagant, prodigal
of something; virtue has gone out of him.  He did not desire this glimpse
of what lay under the three stars of his catalogue.   God forbid that he
should know anything about the forces of Nature!   God forbid that he
should admit for a moment that there are such things!   Once admit that,
and where was he?   One paid a shilling for entrance, and another for the
programme.

The look which June had seen, which other Forsytes had seen, was like the sudden flashing of a candle through a hole in some imaginary canvas, behind which it was being moved—­the sudden flaming-out of a vague, erratic glow, shadowy and enticing.  It brought home to onlookers the consciousness that dangerous forces were at work.  For a moment they noticed it with pleasure, with interest, then felt they must not notice it at all.

It supplied, however, the reason of June’s coming so late and disappearing again without dancing, without even shaking hands with her lover.  She was ill, it was said, and no wonder.

But here they looked at each other guiltily.  They had no desire to spread scandal, no desire to be ill-natured.  Who would have?  And to outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law keeping them silent.