June looked back at him.  “Oh!  You Forsyte!” she said, and moved on.  About her light, fly-away figure, passing so suddenly away, was a look of dangerous decisions.  Forsyte!  Of course, he was a Forsyte!  And so was she!  But from the time when, as a mere girl, she brought Bosinney into his life to wreck it, he had never hit it off with June and never would!  And here she was, unmarried to this day, owning a Gallery!...  And suddenly it came to Soames how little he knew now of his own family.  The old aunts at Timothy’s had been dead so many years; there was no clearing-house for news.  What had they all done in the War?  Young Roger’s boy had been wounded, St. John Hayman’s second son killed; young Nicholas’ eldest had got an O. B. E., or whatever they gave them.  They had all joined up somehow, he believed.  That boy of Jolyon’s and Irene’s, he supposed, had been too young; his own generation, of course, too old, though Giles Hayman had driven a car for the Red Cross—­and Jesse Hayman been a special constable—­those “Dromios” had always been of a sporting type!  As for himself, he had given a motor ambulance, read the papers till he was sick of them, passed through much anxiety, bought no clothes, lost seven pounds in weight; he didn’t know what more he could have done at his age.  Indeed, thinking it over, it struck him that he and his family had taken this war very differently to that affair with the Boers, which had been supposed to tax all the resources of the Empire.  In that old war, of course, his nephew Val Dartie had been wounded, that fellow Jolyon’s first son had died of enteric, “the Dromios” had gone out on horses, and June had been a nurse; but all that had seemed in the nature of a portent, while in this war everybody had done “their bit,” so far as he could make out, as a matter of course.  It seemed to show the growth of something or other—­or perhaps the decline of something else.  Had the Forsytes become less individual, or more Imperial, or less provincial?  Or was it simply that one hated Germans?...  Why didn’t Fleur come, so that he could get away?  He saw those three return together from the other room and pass back along the far side of the screen.  The boy was standing before the Juno now.  And, suddenly, on the other side of her, Soames saw—­his daughter, with eyebrows raised, as well they might be.  He could see her eyes glint sideways at the boy, and the boy look back at her.  Then Irene slipped her hand through his arm, and drew him on.  Soames saw him glancing round, and Fleur looking after them as the three went out.

A voice said cheerfully:  “Bit thick, isn’t it, sir?”

The young man who had handed him his handkerchief was again passing.  Soames nodded.

“I don’t know what we’re coming to.”

“Oh!  That’s all right, sir,” answered the young man cheerfully; “they don’t either.”

Fleur’s voice said:  “Hallo, Father!  Here you are!” precisely as if he had been keeping her waiting.