sold them at a very fair price, that in one of his
impersonal moods, he found himself able to recollect the Art critic, and
to discover in his own achievement another proof that he was a Forsyte.

He decided to commence with the Botanical Gardens, where he had already
made so many studies, and chose the little artificial pond, sprinkled now
with an autumn shower of red and yellow leaves, for though the gardeners
longed to sweep them off, they could not reach them with their brooms.
The rest of the gardens they swept bare enough, removing every morning
Nature's rain of leaves; piling them in heaps, whence from slow fires
rose the sweet, acrid smoke that, like the cuckoo's note for spring, the
scent of lime trees for the summer, is the true emblem of the fall. The
gardeners' tidy souls could not abide the gold and green and russet
pattern on the grass. The gravel paths must lie unstained, ordered,
methodical, without knowledge of the realities of life, nor of that slow
and beautiful decay which flings crowns underfoot to star the earth with
fallen glories, whence, as the cycle rolls, will leap again wild spring.

Thus each leaf that fell was marked from the moment when it fluttered a
good-bye and dropped, slow turning, from its twig.

But on that little pond the leaves floated in peace, and praised Heaven
with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them.

And so young Jolyon found them.

Coming there one morning in the middle of October, he was disconcerted to
find a bench about twenty paces from his stand occupied, for he had a
proper horror of anyone seeing him at work.

A lady in a velvet jacket was sitting there, with her eyes fixed on the
ground. A flowering laurel, however, stood between, and, taking shelter
behind this, young Jolyon prepared his easel.

His preparations were leisurely; he caught, as every true artist should,
at anything that might delay for a moment the effort of his work, and he
found himself looking furtively at this unknown dame.

Like his father before him, he had an eye for a face. This face was
charming!

He saw a rounded chin nestling in a cream ruffle, a delicate face with
large dark eyes and soft lips. A black 'picture' hat concealed the hair;
her figure was lightly poised against the back of the bench, her knees
were crossed; the tip of a patent-leather shoe emerged beneath her skirt.
There was something, indeed, inexpressibly dainty about the person of
this lady, but young