To Let

ng quietly now, because his heart was in a poor way, and, like all his family, he disliked the idea of dying. He had

ent, on any

te, for such nothingness that he would not even be conscious 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 a

o 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 on

more precise and pressing, had become so used to it, that he thought ha

uld now choose for himself. He had held with his father several discussions, from which, under a cheery show of being ready for anything-except, of course, the Church, Army, Law, Stage, Stock Exchange, Medicine, Business, and Engineering-Jolyon had gathered rather clearly that Jon wanted to go in for nothing. He himself had felt exactly like that at the same age. With him that pleasant vacuity had soon been ended by an early marriage, and its unhappy consequences. Forced to become an underwriter at Lloyd's he had regained prosperity before his artistic talent had outcroppe

for any age, Jolyon perceived that under slightly different surfaces, the era was precisely what it had been. Mankind was still divided into two species: The few who had "spec

"I should like to try farming, Dad; if it won't cost you too much. It seems to be about the only so

d his smile,

irst Jolyon in 1760. It'll prove the cycle theory, and incid

shed, Jon h

think it's a go

d really take to it, you'll do more goo

he won't take to it. I give him four ye

g if they knew of a farmer near them on the Downs who would take Jon as an apprentice. Holly's answer ha

s due to g

some barbarian cut it down-would see old England out at the pace things were going! He remembered a night three years before, when, looking from his window, with his arm close round Irene, he had watched a German aeroplane hovering, it seemed, right over the old tree. Next day they had found a bomb hole in a field on Gage's farm. That was before he knew that he was under sentence

thing in such perfect order, he had not better close his own eyes and drift away. There was something undignified in parasitically clinging on to the effortless

smoke-bush' blue was trailed along the horizon. Irene's flowers in their narrow beds had startling individuality that evening, little deep assertions of gay life. Only Chinese and Japanese painters, and perhaps Leonardo, had known how to get that startling little ego into each painted flower, and bird, and beast-the ego, yet the sense of species, the universality of life as well. They were the fellows! 'I've made nothing that will live!' thought Jolyon; 'I've been an amateur-a mere lover, not a creator. Still, I shall leave Jon b

and sat down by the window. She sat

s it, m

n encount

h wh

ame

ars; conscious that it was bad for him. And, now, his heart moved i

ent on

Gallery, and afterwards at the

and put his han

id he

therwise muc

he dau

least, Jon

again. His wife's face had

n't-?" h

e. The girl dropped her hand

n on his bed.

ou. Did she put

y queer and strained, a

a long breat

e've been right to keep it fro

other if she had done what I have?" Yes! There it was! Jon worshipped his mother; and knew nothing of the tragedies, the inexorable n

told him?" he

m; that you had never cared much for your family,

take the place of air-raids," he

ooked u

it would co

her with s

hought. He has imagination; and he'll understand if it's put to him pro

et, Jo

uchstone by which he could judge the values of that old tragedy; till love, jealousy, longing, had deepened his charity. All the same, one must take precautions-every precaution possible! And, long after Irene had left him, he lay awake turnin

with the chiming of the stable clock; and another began for Jolyon in the sh

once natural and miraculous. Fleur! Her name alone was almost enough for one who was terribly susceptible to the charm of words. In a homoeopathic age, when boys and girls were coeducated, and mixed up in early life till sex was almost abolished, Jon was singularly old-fashioned. His modern school took boys only, and his holidays had

fields, reached the pond just as the sun rose, and passed into the coppice. Bluebells carpeted the ground there; among the larch-trees there was mystery-the air, as it were, composed of that romantic quality. Jon sniffed its freshness, and stared at the bluebells in the sharpening light. Fleur! It rhymed with her! And she lived at Mapledurham-a jolly name, too, on the river somewhere. He could find it in the atl

room window out of sheer exhilaration. Then, remembering that the study window was open, he went down and shut it, first removing