, he read:

"JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.--Your son passed painlessly away on June
20th. Deep sympathy"--some name unknown to him.

He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless. The moon shone in on him; a
moth flew in his face. The first day of all that he had not thought
almost ceaselessly of Jolly. He went blindly towards the window, struck
against the old armchair--his father's--and sank down on to the arm of
it. He sat there huddled' forward, staring into the night. Gone out
like a candle flame; far from home, from love, all by himself, in the
dark! His boy! From a little chap always so good to him--so friendly!
Twenty years old, and cut down like grass--to have no life at all! 'I
didn't really know him,' he thought, 'and he didn't know me; but we loved
each other. It's only love that matters.'

To die out there--lonely--wanting them--wanting home! This seemed to his
Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself. No shelter,
no protection, no love at the last! And all the deeply rooted clanship
in him, the family feeling and essential clinging to his own flesh and
blood which had been so strong in old Jolyon was so strong in all the
Forsytes--felt outraged, cut, and torn by his boy's lonely passing.
Better far if he had died in battle, without time to long for them to
come to him, to call out for them, perhaps, in his delirium!

The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with uncanny
life, so that it seemed watching him--the oak-tree his boy had been so
fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and hurt himself, and
hadn't cried!

The door creaked. He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and read
it. He heard the faint rustle of her dress. She sank on her knees close
to him, and he forced himself to smile at her. She stretched up her arms
and drew his head down on her shoulder. The perfume and warmth of her
encircled him; her presence gained slowly his whole being.

CHAPTER VIII

JAMES IN WAITING

Sweated to serenity, Soames dined at the Remove and turned his face
toward Park Lane. His father had been unwell lately. This would have to
be kept from him! Never till that moment had he realised how much the
dread of bringing James' grey hairs down with sorrow to the grave had
counted with him; how intimately it was bound up with his own shrinking
from scandal. His affection for his father, always deep, had increased
of late years with the knowledge