A sense of defeat--of being defrauded of his self-justification, and of
something else beyond power of explanation to himself, beset Soames
like the breath of a cold fog. Mechanically he reached up, took from the
mantel-shelf a little china bowl, reversed it, and said:
"Lowestoft. Where did you get this? I bought its fellow at Jobson's."
And, visited by the sudden memory of how, those many years ago, he and
she had bought china together, he remained staring at the little bowl,
as if it contained all the past. Her voice roused him.
"Take it. I don't want it."
Soames put it back on the shelf.
"Will you shake hands?" he said.
A faint smile curved her lips. She held out her hand. It was cold to his
rather feverish touch. 'She's made of ice,' he thought--'she was always
made of ice!' But even as that thought darted through him, his senses
were assailed by the perfume of her dress and body, as though the warmth
within her, which had never been for him, were struggling to show its
presence. And he turned on his heel. He walked out and away, as if
someone with a whip were after him, not even looking for a cab, glad of
the empty Embankment and the cold river, and the thick-strewn shadows
of the plane-tree leaves--confused, flurried, sore at heart, and vaguely
disturbed, as though he had made some deep mistake whose consequences
he could not foresee. And the fantastic thought suddenly assailed him if
instead of, 'I think you had better go,' she had said, 'I think you had
better stay!' What should he have felt, what would he have done? That
cursed attraction of her was there for him even now, after all these
years of estrangement and bitter thoughts. It was there, ready to mount
to his head at a sign, a touch. 'I was a fool to go!' he muttered. 'I've
advanced nothing. Who could imagine? I never thought!' Memory, flown
back to the first years of his marriage, played him torturing tricks.
She had not deserved to keep her beauty--the beauty he had owned and
known so well. And a kind of bitterness at the tenacity of his own
admiration welled up in him. Most men would have hated the sight of
her, as she had deserved. She had spoiled his life, wounded his pride to
death, defrauded him of a son. And yet the mere sight of her, cold and
resisting as ever, had this power to upset him utterly! It was some
damned magnetism she had! And no wonder if, as she asserted; she had
lived untouched these last twelve years. So Bosinney--cursed be his
memory!--had lived on all this time with her! Soames could not tell
whether he was glad of that knowledge or no.