For some minutes Soames stared at that note.  Ever since he had given those instructions he had been tempted to annul them.  It was so scandalous, such a general disgrace!  The evidence, too, what he had heard of it, had never seemed to him conclusive; somehow, he believed less and less that those two had gone all lengths.  But this, of course, would drive them to it; and he suffered from the thought.  That fellow to have her love, where he had failed!  Was it too late?  Now that they had been brought up sharp by service of this petition, had he not a lever with which he could force them apart?  ‘But if I don’t act at once,’ he thought, ’it will be too late, now they’ve had this thing.  I’ll go and see him; I’ll go down!’

And, sick with nervous anxiety, he sent out for one of the ‘new-fangled’ motor-cabs.  It might take a long time to run that fellow to ground, and Goodness knew what decision they might come to after such a shock!  ’If I were a theatrical ass,’ he thought, ’I suppose I should be taking a horse-whip or a pistol or something!’ He took instead a bundle of papers in the case of ‘Magentie versus Wake,’ intending to read them on the way down.  He did not even open them, but sat quite still, jolted and jarred, unconscious of the draught down the back of his neck, or the smell of petrol.  He must be guided by the fellow’s attitude; the great thing was to keep his head!

London had already begun to disgorge its workers as he neared Putney Bridge; the ant-heap was on the move outwards.  What a lot of ants, all with a living to get, holding on by their eyelids in the great scramble!  Perhaps for the first time in his life Soames thought:  ’I could let go if I liked!  Nothing could touch me; I could snap my fingers, live as I wished—­enjoy myself!’ No!  One could not live as he had and just drop it all—­settle down in Capua, to spend the money and reputation he had made.  A man’s life was what he possessed and sought to possess.  Only fools thought otherwise—­fools, and socialists, and libertines!

The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace.  ’Fifteen miles an hour, I should think!’ he mused; ’this’ll take people out of town to live!’ and he thought of its bearing on the portions of London owned by his father—­he himself had never taken to that form of investment, the gambler in him having all the outlet needed in his pictures.  And the cab sped on, down the hill past Wimbledon Common.  This interview!  Surely a man of fifty-two with grown-up children, and hung on the line, would not be reckless.  ‘He won’t want to disgrace the family,’ he thought; ’he was as fond of his father as I am of mine, and they were brothers.  That woman brings destruction—­what is it in her?  I’ve never known.’  The cab branched off, along the side of a wood, and he heard a late cuckoo calling, almost the first he had heard that year.  He was now almost opposite the site he had originally chosen for his house, and which had been so unceremoniously rejected by Bosinney in favour of his own choice.  He began passing his handkerchief over his face and hands, taking deep breaths to give him steadiness.  ‘Keep one’s head,’ he thought, ’keep one’s head!’