that it was pain to think of her with that fellow--that
stealing fellow.

CHAPTER VI--A SUMMER DAY

His boy was seldom absent from Jolyon's mind in the days which followed
the first walk with Irene in Richmond Park. No further news had come;
enquiries at the War Office elicited nothing; nor could he expect to
hear from June and Holly for three weeks at least. In these days he felt
how insufficient were his memories of Jolly, and what an amateur of a
father he had been. There was not a single memory in which anger played
a part; not one reconciliation, because there had never been a rupture;
nor one heart-to-heart confidence, not even when Jolly's mother
died. Nothing but half-ironical affection. He had been too afraid of
committing himself in any direction, for fear of losing his liberty, or
interfering with that of his boy.

Only in Irene's presence had he relief, highly complicated by the
ever-growing perception of how divided he was between her and his son.
With Jolly was bound up all that sense of continuity and social creed of
which he had drunk deeply in his youth and again during his boy's public
school and varsity life--all that sense of not going back on what father
and son expected of each other. With Irene was bound up all his delight
in beauty and in Nature. And he seemed to know less and less which was
the stronger within him. From such sentimental paralysis he was rudely
awakened, however, one afternoon, just as he was starting off to
Richmond, by a young man with a bicycle and a face oddly familiar, who
came forward faintly smiling.

"Mr. Jolyon Forsyte? Thank you!" Placing an envelope in Jolyon's hand he
wheeled off the path and rode away. Bewildered, Jolyon opened it.

"Admiralty Probate and Divorce, Forsyte v. Forsyte and Forsyte!"

A sensation of shame and disgust was followed by the instant reaction
'Why, here's the very thing you want, and you don't like it!' But she
must have had one too; and he must go to her at once. He turned things
over as he went along. It was an ironical business. For, whatever the
Scriptures said about the heart, it took more than mere longings to
satisfy the law. They could perfectly well defend this suit, or at least
in good faith try to. But the idea of doing so revolted Jolyon. If not
her lover in deed he was in desire, and he knew that she was ready
to come to him. Her face had told him so. Not that he exaggerated her
feeling for him. She had had her grand