Irene still met him, he was certain; where, or how, he neither knew, nor asked; deterred by a vague and secret dread of too much knowledge.  It all seemed subterranean nowadays.

Sometimes when he questioned his wife as to where she had been, which he still made a point of doing, as every Forsyte should, she looked very strange.  Her self-possession was wonderful, but there were moments when, behind the mask of her face, inscrutable as it had always been to him, lurked an expression he had never been used to see there.

She had taken to lunching out too; when he asked Bilson if her mistress had been in to lunch, as often as not she would answer:  “No, sir.”

He strongly disapproved of her gadding about by herself, and told her so.  But she took no notice.  There was something that angered, amazed, yet almost amused him about the calm way in which she disregarded his wishes.  It was really as if she were hugging to herself the thought of a triumph over him.

He rose from the perusal of Waterbuck, Q.C.’s opinion, and, going upstairs, entered her room, for she did not lock her doors till bed-time—­she had the decency, he found, to save the feelings of the servants.  She was brushing her hair, and turned to him with strange fierceness.

“What do you want?” she said.  “Please leave my room!”

He answered:  “I want to know how long this state of things between us is to last?  I have put up with it long enough.”

“Will you please leave my room?”

“Will you treat me as your husband?”

“No.”

“Then, I shall take steps to make you.”

“Do!”

He stared, amazed at the calmness of her answer.  Her lips were compressed in a thin line; her hair lay in fluffy masses on her bare shoulders, in all its strange golden contrast to her dark eyes—­those eyes alive with the emotions of fear, hate, contempt, and odd, haunting triumph.

“Now, please, will you leave my room?” He turned round, and went sulkily out.

He knew very well that he had no intention of taking steps, and he saw that she knew too—­knew that he was afraid to.

It was a habit with him to tell her the doings of his day:  how such and such clients had called; how he had arranged a mortgage for Parkes; how that long-standing suit of Fryer v.  Forsyte was getting on, which, arising in the preternaturally careful disposition of his property by his great uncle Nicholas, who had tied it up so that no one could get at it at all, seemed likely to remain a source of income for several solicitors till the Day of Judgment.

And how he had called in at Jobson’s, and seen a Boucher sold, which he had just missed buying of Talleyrand and Sons in Pall Mall.

He had an admiration for Boucher, Watteau, and all that school.  It was a habit with him to tell her all these matters, and he continued to do it even now, talking for long spells at dinner, as though by the volubility of words he could conceal from himself the ache in his heart.