what he ate; and every day grew thinner and more worn to look at.  He was again a ‘threadpaper’; and to this thinned form his massive forehead, with hollows at the temples, gave more dignity than ever.  He was very well aware that he ought to see the doctor, but liberty was too sweet.  He could not afford to pet his frequent shortness of breath and the pain in his side at the expense of liberty.  Return to the vegetable existence he had led among the agricultural journals with the life-size mangold wurzels, before this new attraction came into his life—­no!  He exceeded his allowance of cigars.  Two a day had always been his rule.  Now he smoked three and sometimes four—­a man will when he is filled with the creative spirit.  But very often he thought:  ’I must give up smoking, and coffee; I must give up rattling up to town.’  But he did not; there was no one in any sort of authority to notice him, and this was a priceless boon.

The servants perhaps wondered, but they were, naturally, dumb.  Mam’zelle Beauce was too concerned with her own digestion, and too ‘wellbrrred’ to make personal allusions.  Holly had not as yet an eye for the relative appearance of him who was her plaything and her god.  It was left for Irene herself to beg him to eat more, to rest in the hot part of the day, to take a tonic, and so forth.  But she did not tell him that she was the a cause of his thinness—­for one cannot see the havoc oneself is working.  A man of eighty-five has no passions, but the Beauty which produces passion works on in the old way, till death closes the eyes which crave the sight of Her.

On the first day of the second week in July he received a letter from his son in Paris to say that they would all be back on Friday.  This had always been more sure than Fate; but, with the pathetic improvidence given to the old, that they may endure to the end, he had never quite admitted it.  Now he did, and something would have to be done.  He had ceased to be able to imagine life without this new interest, but that which is not imagined sometimes exists, as Forsytes are perpetually finding to their cost.  He sat in his old leather chair, doubling up the letter, and mumbling with his lips the end of an unlighted cigar.  After to-morrow his Tuesday expeditions to town would have to be abandoned.  He could still drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the pretext of seeing his man of business.  But even that would be dependent on his health, for now they would begin to fuss about him.  The lessons!  The lessons must go on!  She must swallow down her scruples, and June must put her feelings in her pocket.  She had done so once, on the day after the news of Bosinney’s death; what she had done then, she could surely do again now.  Four years since that injury was inflicted on her—­not Christian to keep the memory of old sores alive.  June’s will was strong, but his was stronger, for his sands were running out.  Irene was soft, surely she would do this for him, subdue her natural