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 long, 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 quite full now--of
people with extraordinary names, buried in extraordinary taste. Still,
they had a fine view up here, right over