only a transaction in property, a bestowal or refusal of such, could
supply.

His dinner tasted flat. His pint of champagne was dry and bitter stuff,
not like the Veuve Clicquots of old days.

Over his cup of coffee, he bethought him that he would go to the opera.
In the Times, therefore--he had a distrust of other papers--he read the
announcement for the evening. It was 'Fidelio.'

Mercifully not one of those new-fangled German pantomimes by that fellow
Wagner.

Putting on his ancient opera hat, which, with its brim flattened by use,
and huge capacity, looked like an emblem of greater days, and, pulling
out an old pair of very thin lavender kid gloves smelling strongly of
Russia leather, from habitual proximity to the cigar-case in the pocket
of his overcoat, he stepped into a hansom.

The cab rattled gaily along the streets, and old Jolyon was struck by
their unwonted animation.

'The hotels must be doing a tremendous business,' he thought. A
few years ago there had been none of these big hotels. He made a
satisfactory reflection on some property he had in the neighbourhood. It
must be going up in value by leaps and bounds! What traffic!

But from that he began indulging in one of those strange impersonal
speculations, so uncharacteristic of a Forsyte, wherein lay, in part,
the secret of his supremacy amongst them. What atoms men were, and what
a lot of them! And what would become of them all?

He stumbled as he got out of the cab, gave the man his exact fare,
walked up to the ticket office to take his stall, and stood there with
his purse in his hand--he always carried his money in a purse, never
having approved of that habit of carrying it loosely in the pockets, as
so many young men did nowadays. The official leaned out, like an old dog
from a kennel.

"Why," he said in a surprised voice, "it's Mr. Jolyon Forsyte! So it is!
Haven't seen you, sir, for years. Dear me! Times aren't what they were.
Why! you and your brother, and that auctioneer--Mr. Traquair, and Mr.
Nicholas Treffry--you used to have six or seven stalls here regular
every season. And how are you, sir? We don't get younger!"

The colour in old Jolyon's eyes deepened; he paid his guinea. They had
not forgotten him. He marched in, to the sounds of the overture, like an
old war-horse to battle.

Folding his opera hat, he sat down, drew out his lavender gloves in
the old way, and took up his glasses for a long look round the house.
Dropping