ssed her with averted eyes. But when he had gone by he could not
for the life of him help looking back. This, then, was finality--the
heat and stress of his life, the madness and the longing thereof, the
only defeat he had known, would be over when she faded from his view
this time; even such memories had their own queer aching value.

She, too, was looking back. Suddenly she lifted her gloved hand, her
lips smiled faintly, her dark eyes seemed to speak. It was the turn of
Soames to make no answer to that smile and that little farewell wave;
he went out into the fashionable street quivering from head to foot. He
knew what she had meant to say: "Now that I am going for ever out of
the reach of you and yours--forgive me; I wish you well." That was the
meaning; last sign of that terrible reality--passing morality, duty,
common sense--her aversion from him who had owned her body, but had
never touched her spirit or her heart. It hurt; yes--more than if she
had kept her mask unmoved, her hand unlifted.

Three days later, in that fast-yellowing October, Soames took a taxi-cab
to Highgate Cemetery and mounted through its white forest to the Forsyte
vault. Close to the cedar, above catacombs and columbaria, tall, ugly,
and individual, it looked like an apex of the competitive system. He
could remember a discussion wherein Swithin had advocated the addition
to its face of the pheasant proper. The proposal had been rejected in
favour of a wreath in stone, above the stark words: "The family vault
of Jolyon Forsyte: 1850." It was in good order. All trace of the recent
interment had been removed, and its sober grey gloomed reposefully in
the sunshine. The whole family lay there now, except old Jolyon's wife,
who had gone back under a contract to her own family vault in Suffolk;
old Jolyon himself lying at Robin Hill; and Susan Hayman, cremated
so that none knew where she might be. Soames gazed at it with
satisfaction--massive, needing little attention; and this was important,
for he was well aware that no one would attend to it when he himself was
gone, and he would have to be looking out for lodgings soon. He might
have twenty years before him, but one never knew. Twenty years without
an aunt or uncle, with a wife of whom one had better not know anything,
with a daughter gone from home. His mood inclined to melancholy and
retrospection.

This cemetery was full, they said--of people with extraordinary names,
buried in extraordinar