It was hard, when a man worked as he did, making money for her--yes, and with an ache in his heart--that she should sit there, looking--looking as if she saw the walls of the room closing in.

It was enough to make a man get up and leave the table.
The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms--Soames liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an inexpressible feeling of superiority to the majority of his acquaintance, whose wives were contented with their best high frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined at home.

Under that rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin made strange contrast with her dark brown eyes.
Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its deep tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured glass, and quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything prettier than the woman who sat at it?
Gratitude was no virtue among Forsytes, who, competitive, and full of common-sense, had no occasion for it; and Soames only experienced a sense of exasperation amounting to pain, that he did not own her as it was his right to own her, that he could not, as by stretching out his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the very secrets of her heart.
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.
In this house of his there was writing on every wall.

His business-like temperament protested against a mysterious warning that she was not made for him.

He had married this woman, conquered her, made her his own, and it seemed to him contrary to the most fundamental of all laws, the law of possession, that he could do no more than own her body--if indeed he could do that, which he was beginning to doubt.