y
from soiling that bright hair. He might live another five years. She
would be well over thirty by then. 'How much?' She had none of his
blood in her! In loyalty to the tenor of his life for forty years and
more, ever since he married and founded that mysterious thing, a family,
came this warning thought--None of his blood, no right to anything! It
was a luxury then, this notion. An extravagance, a petting of an old
man's whim, one of those things done in dotage. His real future was
vested in those who had his blood, in whom he would live on when he was
gone. He turned away from the bronzes and stood looking at the old
leather chair in which he had sat and smoked so many hundreds of cigars.
And suddenly he seemed to see her sitting there in her grey dress,
fragrant, soft, dark-eyed, graceful, looking up at him. Why! She cared
nothing for him, really; all she cared for was that lost lover of hers.
But she was there, whether she would or no, giving him pleasure with her
beauty and grace. One had no right to inflict an old man's company, no
right to ask her down to play to him and let him look at her--for no
reward! Pleasure must be paid for in this world. 'How much?' After
all, there was plenty; his son and his three grandchildren would never
miss that little lump. He had made it himself, nearly every penny; he
could leave it where he liked, allow himself this little pleasure. He
went back to the bureau. 'Well, I'm going to,' he thought, 'let them
think what they like. I'm going to!' And he sat down.

'How much?' Ten thousand, twenty thousand--how much? If only with his
money he could buy one year, one month of youth. And startled by that
thought, he wrote quickly:

'DEAR HERRING,--Draw me a codicil to this effect: "I leave to my niece
Irene Forsyte, born Irene Heron, by which name she now goes, fifteen
thousand pounds free of legacy duty." 'Yours faithfully, 'JOLYON
FORSYTE.'

When he had sealed and stamped the envelope, he went back to the window
and drew in a long breath. It was dark, but many stars shone now.

IV

He woke at half-past two, an hour which long experience had taught him
brings panic intensity to all awkward thoughts. Experience had also
taught him that a further waking at the proper hour of eight showed the
folly of such panic. On this particular morning the thought which
gathered rapid momentum was that if he became ill, at his age not
improbable, he would not see her.