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 them at last on his folded hat, he fixed his eyes on the curtain.  More poignantly than ever he felt that it was all over and done with him.  Where were all the women, the pretty women, the house used to be so full of?  Where was that old feeling in the heart as he waited for one of those great singers?  Where that sensation of the intoxication of life and of his own power to enjoy it all?

The greatest opera-goer of his day!  There was no opera now!  That fellow Wagner had ruined everything; no melody left, nor any voices to sing it.  Ah! the wonderful singers!  Gone!  He sat watching the old scenes acted, a numb feeling at his heart.

From the curl of silver over his ear to the pose of his foot in its elastic-sided patent boot, there was nothing clumsy or weak about old Jolyon.  He was as upright—­very nearly—­as in those old times when he came every night; his sight was as good—­almost as good.  But what a feeling of weariness and disillusion!

He had been in the habit all his life of enjoying things, even imperfect things—­and there had been many imperfect things—­he had enjoyed them all with moderation, so as to keep himself young.  But now he was deserted by his power of enjoyment, by his philosophy, and left with this dreadful feeling that it was all done with.  Not even the Prisoners’ Chorus, nor Florian’s Song, had the power to dispel the gloom of his loneliness.