Having said that, Jolyon was ashamed. His cousin had flushed a dusky yellowish red. What had made him tease the poor brute!
“I was to tell you she is sorry you are not free. Twelve years is a long time. You know your law, and what chance it gives you.” Soames uttered a curious little grunt, and the two remained a full minute without speaking. “Like wax!” thought Jolyon, watching that close face, where the flush was fast subsiding. “He’ll never give me a sign of what he’s thinking, or going to do. Like wax!” And he transferred his gaze to a plan of that flourishing town, “By-Street on Sea,” the future existence of which lay exposed on the wall to the possessive instincts of the firm’s clients. The whimsical thought flashed through him: “I wonder if I shall get a bill of costs for this—‘To attending Mr. Jolyon Forsyte in the matter of my divorce, to receiving his account of his visit to my wife, and to advising him to go and see her again, sixteen and eightpence.’”
Suddenly Soames said: “I can’t go on like this. I tell you, I can’t go on like this.” His eyes were shifting from side to side, like an animal’s when it looks for way of escape. “He really suffers,” thought Jolyon; “I’ve no business to forget that, just because I don’t like him.”
“Surely,” he said gently, “it lies with yourself. A man can always put these things through if he’ll take it on himself.”
Soames turned square to him, with a sound which seemed to come from somewhere very deep.
“Why should I suffer more than I’ve suffered already? Why should I?”
Jolyon could only shrug his shoulders. His reason agreed, his instinct rebelled; he could not have said why.
“Your father,” went on Soames, “took an interest in her—why, goodness knows! And I suppose you do too?” he gave Jolyon a sharp look. “It seems to me that one only has to do another person a wrong to get all the sympathy. I don’t know in what way I was to blame—I’ve never known. I always treated her well. I gave her everything she could wish for. I wanted her.”
Again Jolyon’s reason nodded; again his instinct shook its head. “What is it?” he thought; “there must be something wrong in me. Yet if there is, I’d rather be wrong than right.”
“After all,” said Soames with a sort of glum fierceness, “she was my wife.”