ot
fit for it,' he thought; 'I mustn't--I'm not fit for it.' The cab sped
on, and in mechanical procession trees, houses, people passed, but had
no significance. 'I feel very queer,' he thought; 'I'll take a Turkish
bath.--I've been very near to something. It won't do.' The cab whirred
its way back over the bridge, up the Fulham Road, along the Park.

"To the Hammam," said Soames.

Curious that on so warm a summer day, heat should be so comforting!
Crossing into the hot room he met George Forsyte coming out, red and
glistening.

"Hallo!" said George; "what are you training for? You've not got much
superfluous."

Buffoon! Soames passed him with his sideway smile. Lying back, rubbing
his skin uneasily for the first signs of perspiration, he thought: 'Let
them laugh! I won't feel anything! I can't stand violence! It's not good
for me!'

CHAPTER VII--A SUMMER NIGHT

Soames left dead silence in the little study. "Thank you for that good
lie," said Jolyon suddenly. "Come out--the air in here is not what it
was!"

In front of a long high southerly wall on which were trained peach-trees
the two walked up and down in silence. Old Jolyon had planted some
cupressus-trees, at intervals, between this grassy terrace and the
dipping meadow full of buttercups and ox-eyed daisies; for twelve years
they had flourished, till their dark spiral shapes had quite a look of
Italy. Birds fluttered softly in the wet shrubbery; the swallows swooped
past, with a steel-blue sheen on their swift little bodies; the grass
felt springy beneath the feet, its green refreshed; butterflies chased
each other. After that painful scene the quiet of Nature was wonderfully
poignant. Under the sun-soaked wall ran a narrow strip of garden-bed
full of mignonette and pansies, and from the bees came a low hum in
which all other sounds were set--the mooing of a cow deprived of her
calf, the calling of a cuckoo from an elm-tree at the bottom of the
meadow. Who would have thought that behind them, within ten miles,
London began--that London of the Forsytes, with its wealth, its misery;
its dirt and noise; its jumbled stone isles of beauty, its grey sea
of hideous brick and stucco? That London which had seen Irene's early
tragedy, and Jolyon's own hard days; that web; that princely workhouse
of the possessive instinct!

And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: 'I hope you'll treat
him as you treated me.' That would depend on himself. Could he