his work--though he did little enough
work now! To leave them for unknown darkness, for the unimaginable
state, for such nothingness that he would not even be conscious of wind
stirring leaves above his grave, nor of the scent of earth and grass. Of
such nothingness that, however hard he might try to conceive it, he never
could, and must still hover on the hope that he might see again those he
loved! To realise this was to endure very poignant spiritual anguish.
Before he reached home that day he had determined to keep it from Irene.
He would have to be more careful than man had ever been, for the least
thing would give it away and make her as wretched as himself, almost.
His doctor had passed him sound in other respects, and seventy was
nothing of an age--he would last a long time yet, if he could.

Such a conclusion, followed out for nearly two years, develops to the
full the subtler side of character. Naturally not abrupt, except when
nervously excited, Jolyon had become control incarnate. The sad patience
of old people who cannot exert themselves was masked by a smile which his
lips preserved even in private. He devised continually all manner of
cover to conceal his enforced lack of exertion.

Mocking himself for so doing, he counterfeited conversion to the Simple
Life; gave up wine and cigars, drank a special kind of coffee with no
coffee in it. In short, he made himself as safe as a Forsyte in his
condition could, under the rose of his mild irony. Secure from
discovery, since his wife and son had gone up to Town, he had spent the
fine May day quietly arranging his papers, that he might die to-morrow
without inconveniencing any one, giving in fact a final polish to his
terrestrial state. Having docketed and enclosed it in his father's old
Chinese cabinet, he put the key into an envelope, wrote the words
outside: "Key of the Chinese cabinet, wherein will be found the exact
state of me, J. F.," and put it in his breast-pocket, where it would be
always about him, in case of accident. Then, ringing for tea, he went out
to have it under the old oak-tree.

All are under sentence of death; Jolyon, whose sentence was but a little
more precise and pressing, had become so used to it that he thought
habitually, like other people, of other things. He thought of his son
now.

Jon was nineteen that day, and Jon had come of late to a decision.
Educated neither at Eton like his father, nor at Harrow, like his dead
ha