That old pet name, disused for years and years, sent a shiver through Winifred.

‘What am I to do with him?’ she thought.  ’What in God’s name am I to do with him?’

“Got a cigarette?”

She gave him one from a little box she kept up there for when she couldn’t sleep at night, and lighted it.  With that action the matter-of-fact side of her nature came to life again.

“Go and have a hot bath.  I’ll put some clothes out for you in the dressing-room.  We can talk later.”

He nodded, and fixed his eyes on her—­they looked half-dead, or was it that the folds in the lids had become heavier?

‘He’s not the same,’ she thought.  He would never be quite the same again!  But what would he be?

“All right!” he said, and went towards the door.  He even moved differently, like a man who has lost illusion and doubts whether it is worth while to move at all.

When he was gone, and she heard the water in the bath running, she put out a complete set of garments on the bed in his dressing-room, then went downstairs and fetched up the biscuit box and whisky.  Putting on her coat again, and listening a moment at the bathroom door, she went down and out.  In the street she hesitated.  Past seven o’clock!  Would Soames be at his Club or at Park Lane?  She turned towards the latter.  Back!

Soames had always feared it—­she had sometimes hoped it....  Back!  So like him—­clown that he was—­with this:  ‘Here we are again!’ to make fools of them all—­of the Law, of Soames, of herself!

Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud hanging over her and the children!  What a relief!  Ah! but how to accept his return?  That ‘woman’ had ravaged him, taken from him passion such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had not thought him capable of.  There was the sting!  That selfish, blatant ‘clown’ of hers, whom she herself had never really stirred, had been swept and ungarnished by another woman!  Insulting!  Too insulting!  Not right, not decent to take him back!  And yet she had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her now!  He was as much her husband as ever—­she had put herself out of court!  And all he wanted, no doubt, was money—­to keep him in cigars and lavender-water!  That scent!  ‘After all, I’m not old,’ she thought, ’not old yet!’ But that woman who had reduced him to those words:  ’I’ve been through it.  I’ve been frightened—­frightened, Freddie!’ She neared her father’s house, driven this way and that, while all the time the Forsyte undertow was drawing her to deep conclusion that after all he was her property, to be held against a robbing world.  And so she came to James’.

“Mr. Soames?  In his room?  I’ll go up; don’t say I’m here.”

Her brother was dressing.  She found him before a mirror, tying a black bow with an air of despising its ends.

“Hullo!” he said, contemplating her in the glass; “what’s wrong?”