Old Jolyon's furrowed face was reddening patchily, as old men's faces
redden in the sun. He took one of Jolly's hands in his own; the boy
climbed on to his knee; and little Holly, mesmerized by this sight,
crept up to them; the sound of the dog Balthasar's scratching arose
rhythmically.

Suddenly young Mrs. Jolyon got up and hurried indoors. A minute later
her husband muttered an excuse, and followed. Old Jolyon was left alone
with his grandchildren.

And Nature with her quaint irony began working in him one of her strange
revolutions, following her cyclic laws into the depths of his heart. And
that tenderness for little children, that passion for the beginnings of
life which had once made him forsake his son and follow June, now worked
in him to forsake June and follow these littler things. Youth, like a
flame, burned ever in his breast, and to youth he turned, to the round
little limbs, so reckless, that wanted care, to the small round faces
so unreasonably solemn or bright, to the treble tongues, and the shrill,
chuckling laughter, to the insistent tugging hands, and the feel of
small bodies against his legs, to all that was young and young, and once
more young. And his eyes grew soft, his voice, and thin-veined hands
soft, and soft his heart within him. And to those small creatures he
became at once a place of pleasure, a place where they were secure, and
could talk and laugh and play; till, like sunshine, there radiated from
old Jolyon's wicker chair the perfect gaiety of three hearts.

But with young Jolyon following to his wife's room it was different.

He found her seated on a chair before her dressing-glass, with her hands
before her face.

Her shoulders were shaking with sobs. This passion of hers for suffering
was mysterious to him. He had been through a hundred of these moods; how
he had survived them he never knew, for he could never believe they were
moods, and that the last hour of his partnership had not struck.

In the night she would be sure to throw her arms round his neck and say:
"Oh! Jo, how I make you suffer!" as she had done a hundred times before.

He reached out his hand, and, unseen, slipped his razor-case into his
pocket. 'I cannot stay here,' he thought, 'I must go down!' Without a
word he left the room, and went back to the lawn.

Old Jolyon had little Holly on his knee; she had taken possession of
his watch; Jolly, very red in the face, was trying to show that he could
stand on h