rom June in favour of Soames' wife,
knowing really almost nothing about Val he was at sea. He just did
dislike him. The question, however, was: What should he do? Val Dartie,
it was true, was a second-cousin, but it was not the thing for Holly to
go about with him. And yet to 'tell' of what he had chanced on was
against his creed. In this dilemma he went and sat in the old leather
chair and crossed his legs. It grew dark while he sat there staring out
through the long window at the old oak-tree, ample yet bare of leaves,
becoming slowly just a shape of deeper dark printed on the dusk.

'Grandfather!' he thought without sequence, and took out his watch. He
could not see the hands, but he set the repeater going. 'Five o'clock!'
His grandfather's first gold hunter watch, butter-smooth with age--all
the milling worn from it, and dented with the mark of many a fall. The
chime was like a little voice from out of that golden age, when they
first came from St. John's Wood, London, to this house--came driving
with grandfather in his carriage, and almost instantly took to the trees.
Trees to climb, and grandfather watering the geranium-beds below! What
was to be done? Tell Dad he must come home? Confide in June?--only she
was so--so sudden! Do nothing and trust to luck? After all, the Vac.
would soon be over. Go up and see Val and warn him off? But how get his
address? Holly wouldn't give it him! A maze of paths, a cloud of
possibilities! He lit a cigarette. When he had smoked it halfway
through his brow relaxed, almost as if some thin old hand had been passed
gently over it; and in his ear something seemed to whisper: 'Do nothing;
be nice to Holly, be nice to her, my dear!' And Jolly heaved a sigh of
contentment, blowing smoke through his nostrils....

But up in her room, divested of her habit, Holly was still frowning. 'He
is not--he is not!' were the words which kept forming on her lips.

CHAPTER VI

JOLYON IN TWO MINDS

A little private hotel over a well-known restaurant near the Gare St.
Lazare was Jolyon's haunt in Paris. He hated his fellow Forsytes
abroad--vapid as fish out of water in their well-trodden runs, the Opera,
Rue de Rivoli, and Moulin Rouge. Their air of having come because they
wanted to be somewhere else as soon as possible annoyed him. But no
other Forsyte came near this haunt, where he had a wood fire in his
bedroom and the coffee was excellent. Paris was always to him m