Every now and then he would take one or two pictures
away with him in a cab, and stop at Jobson's on his way into the City.
He rarely showed them to anyone; Irene, whose opinion he secretly
respected and perhaps for that reason never solicited, had only been
into the room on rare occasions, in discharge of some wifely duty. She
was not asked to look at the pictures, and she never did. To Soames this
was another grievance. He hated that pride of hers, and secretly dreaded
it.
In the plate-glass window of the picture shop his image stood and looked
at him.
His sleek hair under the brim of the tall hat had a sheen like the hat
itself; his cheeks, pale and flat, the line of his clean-shaven lips,
his firm chin with its greyish shaven tinge, and the buttoned strictness
of his black cut-away coat, conveyed an appearance of reserve
and secrecy, of imperturbable, enforced composure; but his eyes,
cold,--grey, strained--looking, with a line in the brow between them,
examined him wistfully, as if they knew of a secret weakness.
He noted the subjects of the pictures, the names of the painters, made
a calculation of their values, but without the satisfaction he usually
derived from this inward appraisement, and walked on.
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