With all these men young Jolyon felt the same vague irritation. She
looked at none of them, yet was he certain that every man who passed
would look at her like that.
Her face was not the face of a sorceress, who in every look holds out to
men the offer of pleasure; it had none of the 'devil's beauty' so highly
prized among the first Forsytes of the land; neither was it of that
type, no less adorable, associated with the box of chocolate; it was not
of the spiritually passionate, or passionately spiritual order, peculiar
to house-decoration and modern poetry; nor did it seem to promise to
the playwright material for the production of the interesting and
neurasthenic figure, who commits suicide in the last act.
In shape and colouring, in its soft persuasive passivity, its sensuous
purity, this woman's face reminded him of Titian's 'Heavenly Love,' a
reproduction of which hung over the sideboard in his dining-room. And
her attraction seemed to be in this soft passivity, in the feeling she
gave that to pressure she must yield.
For what or whom was she waiting, in the silence, with the trees
dropping here and there a leaf, and the thrushes strutting close on
grass, touched with the sparkle of the autumn rime? Then her charming
face grew eager, and, glancing round, with almost a lover's jealousy,
young Jolyon saw Bosinney striding across the grass.
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