s of wind
stirring leaves above his grave, nor of the scent of earth and grass.
Of such nothingness that, however hard he might try to conceive it, he
never could, and must still hover on the hope that he might see again
those he loved! To realise this was to endure very poignant spiritual
anguish. Before he reached home that day, he had determined to keep it
from Irene. He would have to be more careful than man had ever been,
for the least thing would give it away and make her as wretched as
himself, almost. His doctor had passed him sound in other respects, and
seventy was nothing of an age--he would last a long time yet, IF HE
COULD!

Such a conclusion, followed out for nearly two years, develops to the
full the subtler side of character. Naturally not abrupt, except when
nervously excited, Jolyon had become control incarnate. The sad
patience of old people who cannot exert themselves was masked by a
smile which his lips preserved even in private. He devised continually
all manner of cover to conceal his enforced lack of exertion. Mocking
himself for so doing, he counterfeited conversion to the Simple Life;
gave up wine and cigars, drank a special kind of coffee with no coffee
in it. In short, he made himself as safe as a Forsyte in his condition
could, under the rose of his mild irony. Secure from discovery, since
his wife and son had gone up to Town, he had spent the fine May day
quietly arranging his papers, that he might die to-morrow without
inconveniencing any one, giving in fact a final polish to his
terrestrial state. Having docketed and enclosed it in his father's old
Chinese cabinet, he put the key into an envelope, wrote the words
outside: "Key of the Chinese cabinet, wherein will be found the exact
state of me. J.F.," and put it in his breast-pocket, where it would be,
always about him, in case of accident. Then, ringing for tea, he went
out to have it under the old oak-tree.

All are under sentence of death; Jolyon, whose sentence was but a
little more precise and pressing, had become so used to it, that he
thought habitually, like other people, of other things. He thought of
his son now.

Jon was nineteen that day, and Jon had come of late to a decision.
Educated neither at Eton like his father, nor at Harrow, like his dead
half-brother, but at one of those establishments which, designed to
avoid the evil and contain the good of the Public School system, may or
may not contain the evil and avoid the