But Irene could be imagined, like some nymph, bathing in wayside streams, for the joy of the freshness and of seeing her own fair body.

In this conflict throughout the house the woman had gone to the wall. As in the struggle between Saxon and Celt still going on within the nation, the more impressionable and receptive temperament had had forced on it a conventional superstructure.

Thus the house had acquired a close resemblance to hundreds of other houses with the same high aspirations, having become: “That very charming little house of the Soames Forsytes, quite individual, my dear⁠—really elegant.”

For Soames Forsyte⁠—read James Peabody, Thomas Atkins, or Emmanuel Spagnoletti, the name in fact of any upper-middle-class Englishman in London with any pretensions to taste; and though the decoration be different, the phrase is just.

On the evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin Hill, in the dining-room of this house⁠—“quite individual, my dear⁠—really elegant”⁠—Soames and Irene were seated at dinner. A hot dinner on Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common to this house and many others. Early in married life Soames had laid down the rule: “The servants must give us hot dinner on Sundays⁠—they’ve nothing to do but play the concertina.”

The custom had produced no revolution. For⁠—to Soames a rather deplorable sign⁠—servants were devoted to Irene, who, in defiance of all safe tradition, appeared to recognise their right to a share in the weaknesses of human nature.

The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but rectangularly, at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without a cloth⁠—a distinguishing elegance⁠—and so far had not spoken a word.