But Irene could be imagined, like some nymph, bathing in wayside streams, for the joy of the freshness and of seeing her own fair body.

In this conflict throughout the house the woman had gone to the wall.  As in the struggle between Saxon and Celt still going on within the nation, the more impressionable and receptive temperament had had forced on it a conventional superstructure.

Thus the house had acquired a close resemblance to hundreds of other houses with the same high aspirations, having become:  ’That very charming little house of the Soames Forsytes, quite individual, my dear—­really elegant.’

For Soames Forsyte—­read James Peabody, Thomas Atkins, or Emmanuel Spagnoletti, the name in fact of any upper-middle class Englishman in London with any pretensions to taste; and though the decoration be different, the phrase is just.

On the evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin Hill, in the dining-room of this house—­’quite individual, my dear—­really elegant’—­Soames and Irene were seated at dinner.  A hot dinner on Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common to this house and many others.  Early in married life Soames had laid down the rule:  ’The servants must give us hot dinner on Sundays—­they’ve nothing to do but play the concertina.’

The custom had produced no revolution.  For—­to Soames a rather deplorable sign—­servants were devoted to Irene, who, in defiance of all safe tradition, appeared to recognise their right to a share in the weaknesses of human nature.

The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but rectangularly, at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without a cloth—­a distinguishing elegance—­and so far had not spoken a word.

Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had been buying, and so long as he talked Irene’s silence did not distress him.  This evening he had found it impossible to talk.  The decision to build had been weighing on his mind all the week, and he had made up his mind to tell her.

His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had no business to make him feel like that—­a wife and a husband being one person.  She had not looked at him once since they sat down; and he wondered what on earth she had been thinking about all the time.  It was hard, when a man worked as he did, making money for her—­yes, and with an ache in his heart—­that she should sit there, looking—­looking as if she saw the walls of the room closing in.  It was enough to make a man get up and leave the table.

The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms—­Soames liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an inexpressible feeling of superiority to the majority of his acquaintance, whose wives were contented with their best high frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined at home.  Under that rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin made strange contrast with her dark brown eyes.