That good-bye had lasted until now.

He had proposed to continue a reduced allowance to young Jolyon, but this had been refused, and perhaps that refusal hadhurt him more than anything, for with it had gone the last outlet of his penned-in affection; and there had come suchtangible and solid proof of rupture as only a transaction in property, a bestowal or refusal of such, could supply.

His dinner tasted flat. His pint of champagne was dry and bitter stuff, not like the Veuve Clicquots of old days.

Over his cup of coffee, he bethought him that he would go to the opera. In the Times, therefore — he had a distrust ofother papers — he read the announcement for the evening. It was ‘Fidelio.’

Mercifully not one of those new-fangled German pantomimes by that fellow Wagner.

Putting on his ancient opera hat, which, with its brim flattened by use, and huge capacity, looked like an emblem ofgreater days, and, pulling out an old pair of very thin lavender kid gloves smelling strongly of Russia leather, fromhabitual proximity to the cigar-case in the pocket of his overcoat, he stepped into a hansom.

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. Hemade a satisfactory reflection on some property he had in the neighbourhood. It must be going up in value by leaps andbounds! 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 wouldbecome 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, andstood there with his purse in his hand — he always carried his money in a purse, never having approved of that habit ofcarrying it loosely in the pockets, as so many young men did nowadays. The official leaned out, like an old dog from akennel.