nearly full; and the
two lights struggled, till moonlight conquered, changing the colour and
quality of all the garden, stealing along the flagstones, reaching their
feet, climbing up, changing their faces.

"Well," said Jolyon at last, "you'll be tired, dear; we'd better start.
The maid will show you Holly's room," and he rang the study bell. The
maid who came handed him a telegram. Watching her take Irene away, he
thought: 'This must have come an hour or more ago, and she didn't bring
it out to us! That shows! Well, we'll be hung for a sheep soon!' And,
opening the telegram, he read:

"JOLYON FORSYTE, Robin Hill.--Your son passed painlessly away on June
20th. Deep sympathy"--some name unknown to him.

He dropped it, spun round, stood motionless. The moon shone in on him;
a moth flew in his face. The first day of all that he had not thought
almost ceaselessly of Jolly. He went blindly towards the window, struck
against the old armchair--his father's--and sank down on to the arm of
it. He sat there huddled' forward, staring into the night. Gone out like
a candle flame; far from home, from love, all by himself, in the dark!
His boy! From a little chap always so good to him--so friendly! Twenty
years old, and cut down like grass--to have no life at all! 'I didn't
really know him,' he thought, 'and he didn't know me; but we loved each
other. It's only love that matters.'

To die out there--lonely--wanting them--wanting home! This seemed to his
Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself. No shelter,
no protection, no love at the last! And all the deeply rooted clanship
in him, the family feeling and essential clinging to his own flesh and
blood which had been so strong in old Jolyon was so strong in all the
Forsytes--felt outraged, cut, and torn by his boy's lonely passing.
Better far if he had died in battle, without time to long for them to
come to him, to call out for them, perhaps, in his delirium!

The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with uncanny
life, so that it seemed watching him--the oak-tree his boy had been so
fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and hurt himself, and
hadn't cried!

The door creaked. He saw Irene come in, pick up the telegram and read
it. He heard the faint rustle of her dress. She sank on her knees close
to him, and he forced himself to smile at her. She stretched up her arms
and drew his head down on her shoulder. The perfume and warmth o