seemed! The furtive light from that creeping moon was
getting hold of things down there, stealing in among the boughs of the
trees. 'There's something ironical,' he thought, 'which walks about.
Things don't come off as you think they will. I meant, I tried but one
doesn't change like that all of a sudden, it seems. Fact is, life's too
big a thing for one! All the same, I'm not the man I was yesterday--not
quite!' He closed his eyes, and in one of those flashes of vision which
come when the senses are at rest, he saw himself as it were far down
below--down on the floor of a street narrow as a grave, high as a
mountain, a deep dark slit of a street walking down there, a black midget
of a fellow, among other black midgets--his wife, and the little soldier,
the judge, and those jury chaps--fantoches straight up on their tiny
feet, wandering down there in that dark, infinitely tall, and narrow
street. 'Too much for one!' he thought; 'Too high for one--no getting on
top of it. We've got to be kind, and help one another, and not expect too
much, and not think too much. That's--all!' And, squeezing out his
cigarette, he took six deep breaths of the night air, and got into bed.

INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE

"And Summer's lease hath all
too short a date."
--Shakespeare

I

In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of the
evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the terrace of
his house at Robin Hill. He was waiting for the midges to bite him,
before abandoning the glory of the afternoon. His thin brown hand, where
blue veins stood out, held the end of a cigar in its tapering,
long-nailed fingers--a pointed polished nail had survived with him from
those earlier Victorian days when to touch nothing, even with the tips of
the fingers, had been so distinguished. His domed forehead, great white
moustache, lean cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering
sunshine by an old brown Panama hat. His legs were crossed; in all his
attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who every
morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief. At his feet lay a
woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a Pomeranian--the dog Balthasar
between whom and old Jolyon primal aversion had changed into attachment
with the years. Close to his chair was a swing, and on the swing was
seated one of Holly's dolls--called 'Duffer Ali