; her spirit, far from disembodied, fled with swift wing from
railway-carriage to flowery hedge, straining after Jon, tenacious of his
forbidden image, and the sound of his voice, which was taboo. And she
crinkled her nose, retrieving from the perfume of the riverside night
that moment when his hand slipped between the mayflowers and her cheek.
Long she leaned out in her freak dress, keen to burn her wings at life's
candle; while the moths brushed her cheeks on their pilgrimage to the
lamp on her dressing-table, ignorant that in a Forsyte's house there is
no open flame. But at last even she felt sleepy, and, forgetting her
bells, drew quickly in.

Through the open window of his room, alongside Annette's, Soames, wakeful
too, heard their thin faint tinkle, as it might be shaken from stars, or
the dewdrops falling from a flower, if one could hear such sounds.

'Caprice!' he thought. 'I can't tell. She's wilful. What shall I do?
Fleur!'

And long into the "small" night he brooded.

PART II
I
MOTHER AND SON

To say that Jon Forsyte accompanied his mother to Spain unwillingly would
scarcely have been adequate. He went as a well-natured dog goes for a
walk with its mistress, leaving a choice mutton-bone on the lawn. He
went looking back at it. Forsytes deprived of their mutton-bones are
wont to sulk. But Jon had little sulkiness in his composition. He
adored his mother, and it was his first travel. Spain had become Italy by
his simply saying: "I'd rather go to Spain, Mum; you've been to Italy so
many times; I'd like it new to both of us."

The fellow was subtle besides being naive. He never forgot that he was
going to shorten the proposed two months into six weeks, and must
therefore show no sign of wishing to do so. For one with so enticing a
mutton-bone and so fixed an idea, he made a good enough travelling
companion, indifferent to where or when he arrived, superior to food, and
thoroughly appreciative of a country strange to the most travelled
Englishman. Fleur's wisdom in refusing to write to him was profound, for
he reached each new place entirely without hope or fever, and could
concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and tumbling bells, the
priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing cocks, sombreros,
cactus-hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive-trees, greening
plains, singing birds in tiny cages, watersellers, sunsets, melons,
mules, great churches, pictures, and swimming gre