Moreover, Soames himself disliked the thought of that.

He had tasted of the sordid side of sex during those long years of forced celibacy, secretively, and always with disgust, for he was fastidious, and his sense of law and order innate.

He wanted no hole and corner liaison.

A marriage at the Embassy in Paris, a few months' travel, and he could bring Annette back quite separated from a past which in truth was not too distinguished, for she only kept the accounts in her mother's Soho Restaurant; he could bring her back as something very new and chic with her French taste and self-possession, to reign at 'The Shelter' near Mapledurham.

On Forsyte 'Change and among his riverside friends it would be current that he had met a charming French girl on his travels and married her.