slowly died away.

He leaned far out of the dressing-room window over the little court
below, and saw the first light spread. The outlines of dark walls and
roofs were blurred for a moment, then came out sharper than before.

He remembered how that other night he had watched the lamps paling all
the length of Victoria Street; how he had hurried on his clothes and gone
down into the street, down past houses and squares, to the street where
she was staying, and there had stood and looked at the front of the
little house, as still and grey as the face of a dead man.

And suddenly it shot through his mind; like a sick man's fancy: What's he
doing?--that fellow who haunts me, who was here this evening, who's in
love with my wife--prowling out there, perhaps, looking for her as I know
he was looking for her this afternoon; watching my house now, for all I
can tell!

He stole across the landing to the front of the house, stealthily drew
aside a blind, and raised a window.

The grey light clung about the trees of the square, as though Night, like
a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings. The lamps were still
alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred--no living thing in sight.

Yet suddenly, very faint, far off in the deathly stillness, he heard a
cry writhing, like the voice of some wandering soul barred out of heaven,
and crying for its happiness. There it was again--again! Soames shut
the window, shuddering.

Then he thought: 'Ah! it's only the peacocks, across the water.'

CHAPTER XII

JUNE PAYS SOME CALLS

Jolyon stood in the narrow hall at Broadstairs, inhaling that odour of
oilcloth and herrings which permeates all respectable seaside
lodging-houses. On a chair--a shiny leather chair, displaying its
horsehair through a hole in the top left-hand corner--stood a black
despatch case. This he was filling with papers, with the Times, and a
bottle of Eau-de Cologne. He had meetings that day of the 'Globular Gold
Concessions' and the 'New Colliery Company, Limited,' to which he was
going up, for he never missed a Board; to 'miss a Board' would be one
more piece of evidence that he was growing old, and this his jealous
Forsyte spirit could not bear.

His eyes, as he filled that black despatch case, looked as if at any
moment they might blaze up with anger. So gleams the eye of a schoolboy,
baited by a ring of his companions; but he controls himself, deterred by
the fearful odds against him. A