A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare
St. Lazare was Jolyon's haunt in Paris. He hated his fellow Forsytes
abroad--vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden runs, the
Opera, Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge. Their air of having come because
they wanted to be somewhere else as soon as possible annoyed him. But
no other Forsyte came near this haunt, where he had a wood fire in
his bedroom and the coffee was excellent. Paris was always to him
more attractive in winter. The acrid savour from woodsmoke and
chestnut-roasting braziers, the sharpness of the wintry sunshine
on bright rays, the open cafes defying keen-aired winter, the
self-contained brisk boulevard crowds, all informed him that in winter
Paris possessed a soul which, like a migrant bird, in high summer flew
away.
He spoke French well, had some friends, knew little places where
pleasant dishes could be met with, queer types observed. He felt
philosophic in Paris, the edge of irony sharpened; life took on a
subtle, purposeless meaning, became a bunch of flavours tasted, a
darkness shot with shifting gleams of light.
When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he was
far from admitting that Irene's presence was influencing him. He had not
been there two days before he owned that the wish to see her had
been more than half the reason. In England one did not admit what was
natural. He had thought it might be well to speak to her about the
letting of her flat and other matters, but in Paris he at once knew
better. There was a glamour over the city. On the third day he wrote to
her, and received an answer which procured him a pleasurable shiver of
the nerves:
"MY DEAR JOLYON,
"It will be a happiness for me to see you.
"IRENE."
He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such as he
had often had going to visit an adored picture. No woman, so far as
he remembered, had ever inspired in him this special sensuous and yet
impersonal sensation. He was going to sit and feast his eyes, and come
away knowing her no better, but ready to go and feast his eyes again
to-morrow. Such was his feeling, when in the tarnished and ornate little
lounge of a quiet hotel near the river she came to him preceded by a
small page-boy who uttered the word, "Madame," and vanished. Her face,
her smile, the poise of her figure, were just as he had pictured, and
the expression of her face said plainly: 'A friend!'