The first news of the war was being called in the streets, but he paid
no attention. What could he do to help her? If only his father were
alive! He could have done so much! But why could he not do all that his
father could have done? Was he not old enough?--turned fifty and twice
married, with grown-up daughters and a son. 'Queer,' he thought. 'If she
were plain I shouldn't be thinking twice about it. Beauty is the devil,
when you're sensitive to it!' And into the Club reading-room he went
with a disturbed heart. In that very room he and Bosinney had talked one
summer afternoon; he well remembered even now the disguised and secret
lecture he had given that young man in the interests of June, the
diagnosis of the Forsytes he had hazarded; and how he had wondered what
sort of woman it was he was warning him against. And now! He was almost
in want of a warning himself. 'It's deuced funny!' he thought, 'really
deuced funny!'