“Why have you come again?  Didn’t you understand that I would rather you did not?”

He noticed her clothes—­a dark brown velvet corduroy, a sable boa, a small round toque of the same.  They suited her admirably.  She had money to spare for dress, evidently!  He said abruptly: 

“It’s your birthday.  I brought you this,” and he held out to her the green morocco case.

“Oh!  No-no!”

Soames pressed the clasp; the seven stones gleamed out on the pale grey velvet.

“Why not?” he said.  “Just as a sign that you don’t bear me ill-feeling any longer.”

“I couldn’t.”

Soames took it out of the case.

“Let me just see how it looks.”

She shrank back.

He followed, thrusting his hand with the brooch in it against the front of her dress.  She shrank again.

Soames dropped his hand.

“Irene,” he said, “let bygones be bygones.  If I can, surely you might.  Let’s begin again, as if nothing had been.  Won’t you?” His voice was wistful, and his eyes, resting on her face, had in them a sort of supplication.

She, who was standing literally with her back against the wall, gave a little gulp, and that was all her answer.  Soames went on: 

“Can you really want to live all your days half-dead in this little hole?  Come back to me, and I’ll give you all you want.  You shall live your own life; I swear it.”

He saw her face quiver ironically.

“Yes,” he repeated, “but I mean it this time.  I’ll only ask one thing.  I just want—­I just want a son.  Don’t look like that!  I want one.  It’s hard.”  His voice had grown hurried, so that he hardly knew it for his own, and twice he jerked his head back as if struggling for breath.  It was the sight of her eyes fixed on him, dark with a sort of fascinated fright, which pulled him together and changed that painful incoherence to anger.

“Is it so very unnatural?” he said between his teeth, “Is it unnatural to want a child from one’s own wife?  You wrecked our life and put this blight on everything.  We go on only half alive, and without any future.  Is it so very unflattering to you that in spite of everything I—­I still want you for my wife?  Speak, for Goodness’ sake! do speak.”

Irene seemed to try, but did not succeed.

“I don’t want to frighten you,” said Soames more gently.  “Heaven knows.  I only want you to see that I can’t go on like this.  I want you back.  I want you.”

Irene raised one hand and covered the lower part of her face, but her eyes never moved from his, as though she trusted in them to keep him at bay.  And all those years, barren and bitter, since—­ah! when?—­almost since he had first known her, surged up in one great wave of recollection in Soames; and a spasm that for his life he could not control constricted his face.

“It’s not too late,” he said; “it’s not—­if you’ll only believe it.”