er to mention between man and woman than between man and man; and she
had always been more natural and frank, not deeply secretive like his
Forsyte self.

"I wonder if he will understand, even now, Jolyon? He's so young; and he
shrinks from the physical."

"He gets that shrinking from my father, he was as fastidious as a girl in
all such matters. Would it be better to rewrite the whole thing, and
just say you hated Soames?"

Irene shook her head.

"Hate's only a word. It conveys nothing. No, better as it is."

"Very well. It shall go to-morrow."

She raised her face to his, and in sight of the big house's many
creepered windows, he kissed her.

II

CONFESSION

Late that same afternoon, Jolyon had a nap in the old armchair. Face down
on his knee was La Rotisserie de la Refine Pedauque, and just before he
fell asleep he had been thinking: 'As a people shall we ever really like
the French? Will they ever really like us!' He himself had always liked
the French, feeling at home with their wit, their taste, their cooking.
Irene and he had paid many visits to France before the War, when Jon had
been at his private school. His romance with her had begun in Paris--his
last and most enduring romance. But the French--no Englishman could like
them who could not see them in some sort with the detached aesthetic eye!
And with that melancholy conclusion he had nodded off.

When he woke he saw Jon standing between him and the window. The boy had
evidently come in from the garden and was waiting for him to wake.
Jolyon smiled, still half asleep. How nice the chap looked--sensitive,
affectionate, straight! Then his heart gave a nasty jump; and a quaking
sensation overcame him. Jon! That confession! He controlled himself
with an effort. "Why, Jon, where did you spring from?"

Jon bent over and kissed his forehead.

Only then he noticed the look on the boy's face.

"I came home to tell you something, Dad."

With all his might Jolyon tried to get the better of the jumping,
gurgling sensations within his chest.

"Well, sit down, old man. Have you seen your mother?"

"No." The boy's flushed look gave place to pallor; he sat down on the
arm of the old chair, as, in old days, Jolyon himself used to sit beside
his own father, installed in its recesses. Right up to the time of the
rupture in their relations he had been wont to perch there--had he now
reached such a moment with his own son? All his lif