"The truth!" he said; "there's no such thing with women. It's
nerves-nerves."
He heard the whisper:
"Yes; nerves don't lie. Haven't you discovered that?" He was silent,
obsessed by the thought: 'I will hate this woman. I will hate her.' That
was the trouble! If only he could! He shot a glance at her who stood
unmoving against the wall with her head up and her hands clasped, for
all the world as if she were going to be shot. And he said quickly:
"I don't believe a word of it. You have a lover. If you hadn't, you
wouldn't be such a--such a little idiot." He was conscious, before the
expression in her eyes, that he had uttered something of a non-sequitur,
and dropped back too abruptly into the verbal freedom of his connubial
days. He turned away to the door. But he could not go out. Something
within him--that most deep and secret Forsyte quality, the impossibility
of letting go, the impossibility of seeing the fantastic and forlorn
nature of his own tenacity--prevented him. He turned about again, and
there stood, with his back against the door, as hers was against
the wall opposite, quite unconscious of anything ridiculous in this
separation by the whole width of the room.
"Do you ever think of anybody but yourself?" he said.
Irene's lips quivered; then she answered slowly:
"Do you ever think that I found out my mistake--my hopeless, terrible
mistake--the very first week of our marriage; that I went on trying
three years--you know I went on trying? Was it for myself?"
Soames gritted his teeth. "God knows what it was. I've never understood
you; I shall never understand you. You had everything you wanted; and
you can have it again, and more. What's the matter with me? I ask you a
plain question: What is it?" Unconscious of the pathos in that enquiry,
he went on passionately: "I'm not lame, I'm not loathsome, I'm not a
boor, I'm not a fool. What is it? What's the mystery about me?"
Her answer was a long sigh.
He clasped his hands with a gesture that for him was strangely full
of expression. "When I came here to-night I was--I hoped--I meant
everything that I could to do away with the past, and start fair again.
And you meet me with 'nerves,' and silence, and sighs. There's nothing
tangible. It's like--it's like a spider's web."
"Yes."
That whisper from across the room maddened Soames afresh.
"Well, I don't choose to be in a spider's web. I'll cut it." He walked
straight up to her. "Now!" What he had gone up to her to do he really
did not know. But when he was close, the old familiar scent of her
clothes suddenly affected him. He put his hands on her shoulders and
bent forward to kiss her. He kissed not her lips, but a little hard line
where the lips had been drawn in; then his face was pressed away by her
hands; he heard her say: "Oh! No!" Shame, compunction, sense of futility
flooded his whole being, he turned on his heel and went straight out.