Moving away, in the confusion of her mood, Fleur almost trod on the toes of a too-familiar figure standing before an Alma Tadema with a sort of grey anxiety, as if lost in the mutability of market values.

“Father! YOU up in town? Come along to lunch, I have to get home quick.”

Hooking his arm and keeping between him and Eve, she guided him away, thinking: ‘Did he see us? Could he have seen us?’

“Have you got enough on?” muttered Soames.

“Heaps!”

“That’s what you women always say. East wind, and your neck like that! Well, I don’t know.”

“No, dear, but I do.”

The grey eyes appraised her from head to foot.

“What are you doing here?” he said. And Flour thought: ‘Thank God he didn’t see. He’d never have asked if he had.’ And she answered:

“I take an interest in art, darling, as well as you.”

“Well, I’m staying with your aunt in Green Street. This east wind has touched my liver. How’s your—how’s Michael?”

“Oh, he’s all right—a little cheap. We had a dinner last night.”

Anniversary! The realism of a Forsyte stirred in him, and he looked under her eyes. Thrusting his hand into his overcoat pocket, he said:

“I was bringing you this.”

Fleur saw a flat substance wrapped in pink tissue paper.

“Darling, what is it?”

Soames put it back into his pocket.

“We’ll see later. Anybody to lunch?”

“Only Bart.”

“Old Mont! Oh, Lord!”

“Don’t you like Bart, dear?”

“Like him? He and I have nothing in common.”

“I thought you fraternised rather over the state of things.”