Winifred endured the agony with tears in her eyes,but no murmur.
Watching for a moment of weakness,she wrenched it free;then placing the dining table between them,said between her teeth:"You are the limit,Monty."(Undoubtedly the inception of that phrase--so is English formed under the stress of circumstances.)Leaving Dartie with foam on his dark moustache she went upstairs,and,after locking her door and bathing her arm in hot water,lay awake all night,thinking of her pearls adorning the neck of another,and of the consideration her husband had presumably received therefor.
The man of the world awoke with a sense of being lost to that world,and a dim recollection of having been called a 'limit.'He sat for half an hour in the dawn and the armchair where he had slept perhaps the unhappiest half-hour he had ever spent,for even to a Dartie there is something tragic about an end.And he knew that he had reached it.Never again would he sleep in his dining-room and wake with the light filtering through those curtains bought by Winifred at Nickens and Jarveys with the money of James.Never again eat a devilled kidney at that rose-wood table,after a roll in the sheets and a hot bath.He took his note case from his dress coat pocket.Four hundred pounds,in fives and tens--the remainder of the proceeds of his half of Sleeve-links,sold last night,cash down,to George Forsyte,who,having won over the race,had not conceived the sudden dislike to the animal which he himself now felt.The ballet was going to Buenos Aires the day after to-morrow,and he was going too.Full value for the pearls had not yet been received;he was only at the soup.