The simple truth, which underlies the whole story, that where sex attraction is utterly and definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no amount of pity, or reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a repulsion implicit in Nature.

The tragedy of whose life is the very simple, uncontrollable tragedy of being unlovable, without quite a thick enough skin to be thoroughly unconscious of the fact.  Not even Fleur loves Soames as he feels he ought to be loved.  But in pitying Soames, readers incline, perhaps, to animus against Irene:  After all, they think, he wasn’t a bad fellow, it wasn’t his fault; she ought to have forgiven him, and so on!

“Let the dead Past bury its dead” would be a better saying if the Past ever died.  The persistence of the Past is one of those tragi-comic blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure on to the stage to mouth its claim to a perfect novelty.

The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have observed, present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world.

She turned back into the drawing-room; but in a minute came out, and stood as if listening.  Then she came stealing up the stairs, with a kitten in her arms.  He could see her face bent over the little beast, which was purring against her neck.  Why couldn’t she look at him like that?

But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on a possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte Saga, it cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the upper-middle class.

When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte died ­but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their property.

“It’s my opinion,” he said unexpectedly, “that it’s just as well as it is.”

The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar position amongst them.  Opportunists and egotists one and all ­though not, indeed, more so than their neighbours ­they quailed before her incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too strong, what could they do but avoid her!

“I’m bad,” he said, pouting ­“been bad all the week; don’t sleep at night.  The doctor can’t tell why.  He’s a clever fellow, or I shouldn’t have him, but I get nothing out of him but bills.”

There was little sentimentality about the Forsytes.  In that great London, which they had conquered and become merged in, what time had they to be sentimental?

A moment passed, and young Jolyon, turning on his heel, marched out at the door.  He could hardly see; his smile quavered.  Never in all the fifteen years since he had first found out that life was no simple business, had he found it so singularly complicated.

As in all self-respecting families, an emporium had been established where family secrets were bartered, and family stock priced.  It was known on Forsyte ’Change that Irene regretted her marriage.  Her regret was disapproved of.  She ought to have known her own mind; no dependable woman made these mistakes.

Out of his other property, out of all the things he had collected, his silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and intimate feeling; out of her he got none.

Of all those whom this strange rumour about Bosinney and Mrs. Soames reached, James was the most affected.  He had long forgotten how he had hovered, lanky and pale, in side whiskers of chestnut hue, round Emily, in the days of his own courtship.  He had long forgotten the small house in the purlieus of Mayfair, where he had spent the early days of his married life, or rather, he had long forgotten the early days, not the small house, ­a Forsyte never forgot a house ­he had afterwards sold it at a clear profit of four hundred pounds.

And those countless Forsytes, who, in the course of innumerable transactions concerned with property of all sorts (from wives to water rights)....

“I now move, ’That the report and accounts for the year 1886 be received and adopted.’  You second that?  Those in favour signify the same in the usual way.  Contrary ­no.  Carried.  The next business, gentlemen....”  Soames smiled.  Certainly Uncle Jolyon had a way with him!

Forces regardless of family or class or custom were beating down his guard; impending events over which he had no control threw their shadows on his head.  The irritation of one accustomed to have his way was, roused against he knew not what.

“We are, of course, all of us the slaves of property, and I admit that it’s a question of degree, but what I call a ‘Forsyte’ is a man who is decidedly more than less a slave of property.  He knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip on property ­it doesn’t matter whether it be wives, houses, money, or reputation ­is his hall-mark.” ­“Ah!” murmured Bosinney.  “You should patent the word.” ­“I should like,” said young Jolyon, “to lecture on it:  ‘Properties and quality of a Forsyte’:  This little animal, disturbed by the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his motions by the laughter of strange creatures (you or I).  Hereditarily disposed to myopia, he recognises only the persons of his own species, amongst which he passes an existence of competitive tranquillity.”

“My people,” replied young Jolyon, “are not very extreme, and they have their own private peculiarities, like every other family, but they possess in a remarkable degree those two qualities which are the real tests of a Forsyte ­the power of never being able to give yourself up to anything soul and body, and the ’sense of property’.”

An unhappy marriage!  No ill-treatment ­only that indefinable malaise, that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under Heaven; and so from day to day, from night to night, from week to week, from year to year, till death should end it.

The more I see of people the more I am convinced that they are never good or bad ­merely comic, or pathetic.  You probably don’t agree with me!’

“Don’t touch me!” she cried.  He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.  “And where may you have been?” he asked.  “In heaven ­out of this house!” With those words she fled upstairs.

It seemed to young Jolyon that he could hear her saying:  “But, darling, it would ruin you!” For he himself had experienced to the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman’s heart that she is a drag on the man she loves.

She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing where to turn, not knowing what she was doing.

“What do you mean by God?” he said; “there are two irreconcilable ideas of God.  There’s the Unknowable Creative Principle ­one believes in That.  And there’s the Sum of altruism in man naturally one believes in That.”

She was such a decided mortal; knew her own mind so terribly well; wanted things so inexorably until she got them ­and then, indeed, often dropped them like a hot potato.  Her mother had been like that, whence had come all those tears.  Not that his incompatibility with his daughter was anything like what it had been with the first Mrs. Young Jolyon.  One could be amused where a daughter was concerned; in a wife’s case one could not be amused.

“Thank you for that good lie.”

Love has no age, no limit; and no death.

Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave of what he adored?  Could beauty be confided to him?  Or should she not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments which passed, to return only at her own choosing?  ‘We are a breed of spoilers!’ thought Jolyon, ’close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us.  Let her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not.  Let me be just her stand-by, her perching-place; never-never her cage!’

....causing the animal to wake and attack his fleas; for though he was supposed to have none, nothing could persuade him of the fact.

“It’s always worth while before you do anything to consider whether it’s going to hurt another person more than is absolutely necessary.”