An incredibly long chapter about one dinner conversation

In the midst of an incredibly long chapter in volume two of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, during which Sylvia Tietjens, arrived unexpectedly and against army protocol at the post in Rouen from which men are sent off to the front, at least meets her estranged husband, Tietjens, when he shows up at the hotel at which she's staying; a few surprising elements - first, before T. turns up, Sylvia becomes extremely jealous and possessive and worries that T. has stashed away his "mistress," Valentine Wannop, somewhere in the town. S. decides to "investigate," and does so by interrogating a rather idiotic officer - who tells her the truth, that Tietjens is a terrific military officer (clearly something we could not have foreseen from his blustery behavior in volume 1), and that he is a super-straight-arrow, almost never leaving the base. Perhaps armed with this assurance, Sylvia finds, when T. at last turns up at her dinner table, though barely speaks to her, that she's overwhelmingly sexually attracted to him - this is a first! (FMF seems I think to ID with T., a rumpled genius with a difficult life and a difficult name - bit of a male fantasy here?); she also reflects, Molly Bloom-like, on her many affairs and realizes the men she ran off with for weekends or longer were all dull and appeared like boys against the manliness and intelligence of T. OK, so is she in love with him? Does she even have the capacity to be kind to him? It appears not - she is destined to torment those who she loves; she's a troubled soul who destroys all that she touches. The dinner scene in this long chapter, moving in and out of her consciousness, sometimes narrated in open conversation among S., T., and the foolish fellow officer who understands nothing of what S. and T. are obliquely saying to each other - often speaking to each other through him - and sometimes into S.'s interior thoughts, reveals Sylvia's cruelty and Tietjens's stubborn and almost suicidal idealism. No doubt he, like the insipid Perowne or like his foppish friend McMaster, who barely appears so far in volume 2, could get out of military service or at the least could be assigned to headquarters to a general's staff, but he's obviously bound for the front. Just as he won't divorce his wife, S., he won't take any action to advance his own self-interest - and yet he's far from a heroic or militarist or even patriotic sort. He's rigid and unwavering, and, like Sylvia, emotionally distant.  (Note re yesterday's post: I don't think there is actually a direct quote through which Perowne asks Sylvia to leave her door unlocked, and I guess she doesn't respond with the words: whatever for? - but that's the essence of that Sylvia-Perowne chapter, and maybe that's how it was played in the miniseries? - in the novel, it's all by indirect quotation.)