He gave it to her, and walked away among the roses. Presently, seeing that she had finished reading and was standing quite still with the sheets of the letter against her skirt, he came back to her.

“Well?”

“It's wonderfully put. I don't see how it could be put better. Thank you, dear.”

“Is there anything you would like left out?”

She shook her head.

“No; he must know all, if he's to understand.”

“That's what I thought, but—I hate it!”

He had the feeling that he hated it more than she—to him sex was so much easier to mention between man and woman than between man and man; and she had always been more natural and frank, not deeply secretive like his Forsyte self.

“I wonder if he will understand, even now, Jolyon? He's so young; and he shrinks from the physical.”

“He gets that shrinking from my father, he was as fastidious as a girl in all such matters. Would it be better to rewrite the whole thing, and just say you hated Soames?”