“Go and see her?” he thought, “or ask her to come down here? What’s her life been? What is it now, I wonder? Beastly to rake up things at this time of day.” Again the figure of his cousin standing with a hand on a front door of a fine olive-green leaped out, vivid, like one of those figures from old-fashioned clocks when the hour strikes; and his words sounded in Jolyon’s ears clearer than any chime: “I manage my own affairs. I’ve told you once, I tell you again: We are not at home.” The repugnance he had then felt for Soames⁠—for his flat-cheeked, shaven face full of spiritual bull-doggedness; for his spare, square, sleek figure slightly crouched as it were over the bone he could not digest⁠—came now again, fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase. “I dislike him,” he thought, “I dislike him to the very roots of me. And that’s lucky; it’ll make it easier for me to back his wife.” Half-artist, and half-Forsyte, Jolyon was constitutionally averse from what he termed “ructions”; unless angered, he conformed deeply to that classic description of the she-dog, “Er’d ruther run than fight.” A little smile became settled in his beard. Ironical that Soames should come down here⁠—to this house, built for himself!