ience, the balance and shrewd common
sense of that old Forsyte, he sat down in the ancient chair and
crossed his knees. But he felt a mere shadow sitting there; nor did any
inspiration come, while the fingers of the wind tapped on the darkening
panes of the french-window.

'Go and see her?' he thought, 'or ask her to come down here? What's her
life been? What is it now, I wonder? Beastly to rake up things at this
time of day.' Again the figure of his cousin standing with a hand on a
front door of a fine olive-green leaped out, vivid, like one of those
figures from old-fashioned clocks when the hour strikes; and his words
sounded in Jolyon's ears clearer than any chime: "I manage my own
affairs. I've told you once, I tell you again: We are not at home." The
repugnance he had then felt for Soames--for his flat-cheeked, shaven
face full of spiritual bull-doggedness; for his spare, square,
sleek figure slightly crouched as it were over the bone he could not
digest--came now again, fresh as ever, nay, with an odd increase. 'I
dislike him,' he thought, 'I dislike him to the very roots of me.
And that's lucky; it'll make it easier for me to back his wife.'
Half-artist, and half-Forsyte, Jolyon was constitutionally averse from
what he termed 'ructions'; unless angered, he conformed deeply to that
classic description of the she-dog, 'Er'd ruther run than fight.' A
little smile became settled in his beard. Ironical that Soames should
come down here--to this house, built for himself! How he had gazed and
gaped at this ruin of his past intention; furtively nosing at the walls
and stairway, appraising everything! And intuitively Jolyon thought: 'I
believe the fellow even now would like to be living here. He could never
leave off longing for what he once owned! Well, I must act, somehow or
other; but it's a bore--a great bore.'

Late that evening he wrote to the Chelsea flat, asking if Irene would
see him.

The old century which had seen the plant of individualism flower so
wonderfully was setting in a sky orange with coming storms. Rumours of
war added to the briskness of a London turbulent at the close of the
summer holidays. And the streets to Jolyon, who was not often up in
town, had a feverish look, due to these new motorcars and cabs, of which
he disapproved aesthetically. He counted these vehicles from his hansom,
and made the proportion of them one in twenty. 'They were one in thirty
about a year ago,' he thought; 'they've