Annette looked up at him for a moment, looked down, and played with her
fork.
"No," she said, "I do not like it."
'I've got her,' thought Soames, 'if I want her. But do I want her?' She
was graceful, she was pretty--very pretty; she was fresh, she had taste
of a kind. His eyes travelled round the little room; but the eyes of his
mind went another journey--a half-light, and silvery walls, a satinwood
piano, a woman standing against it, reined back as it were from him--a
woman with white shoulders that he knew, and dark eyes that he had
sought to know, and hair like dull dark amber. And as in an artist who
strives for the unrealisable and is ever thirsty, so there rose in him
at that moment the thirst of the old passion he had never satisfied.
"Well," he said calmly, "you're young. There's everything before you."
Annette shook her head.
"I think sometimes there is nothing before me but hard work. I am not so
in love with work as mother."
"Your mother is a wonder," said Soames, faintly mocking; "she will never
let failure lodge in her house."
Annette sighed. "It must be wonderful to be rich."
"Oh! You'll be rich some day," answered Soames, still with that faint
mockery; "don't be afraid."
Annette shrugged her shoulders. "Monsieur is very kind." And between her
pouting lips she put a chocolate.
'Yes, my dear,' thought Soames, 'they're very pretty.'
Madame Lamotte, with coffee and liqueur, put an end to that colloquy.
Soames did not stay long.
Outside in the streets of Soho, which always gave him such a feeling of
property improperly owned, he mused. If only Irene had given him a son,
he wouldn't now be squirming after women! The thought had jumped out of
its little dark sentry-box in his inner consciousness. A son--something
to look forward to, something to make the rest of life worth while,
something to leave himself to, some perpetuity of self. 'If I had a
son,' he thought bitterly, 'a proper legal son, I could make shift to go
on as I used. One woman's much the same as another, after all.' But as
he walked he shook his head. No! One woman was not the same as another.
Many a time had he tried to think that in the old days of his thwarted
married life; and he had always failed. He was failing now. He was
trying to think Annette the same as that other. But she was not, she had
not the lure of that old passion. 'And Irene's my wife,' he thought, 'my
legal wife. I have done nothing to put her away from me. Why shouldn't
she come back to me? It's the right thing, the lawful thing. It makes no
scandal, no disturbance. If it's disagreeable to her--but why should it
be? I'm not a leper, and she--she's no longer in love!' Why should he
be put to the shifts and the sordid disgraces and the lurking defeats of
the Divorce Court, when there she was like an empty house only waiting
to be retaken into use and possession by him who legally owned her? To
one so secretive as Soames the thought of reentry into quiet possession
of his own property with nothing given away to the world was intensely
alluring. 'No,' he mused, 'I'm glad I went to see that girl. I know now
what I want most. If only Irene will come back I'll be as considerate as
she wishes; she could live her own life; but perhaps--perhaps she would
come round to me.' There was a lump in his throat. And doggedly along
by the railings of the Green Park, towards his father's house, he
went, trying to tread on his shadow walking before him in the brilliant
moonlight.