“Yet you’ve done it yourself!”
Young Jolyon acknowledged the hit by losing his smile.
“You forget,” he said with a queer pride, “I can hold on, too—I’m a Forsyte myself. We’re all in the path of great forces. The man who leaves the shelter of the wall—well—you know what I mean. I don’t,” he ended very low, as though uttering a threat, “recommend every man to-go-my-way. It depends.”
The colour rushed into Bosinney’s face, but soon receded, leaving it sallow-brown as before. He gave a short laugh, that left his lips fixed in a queer, fierce smile; his eyes mocked young Jolyon.
“Thanks,” he said. “It’s deuced kind of you. But you’re not the only chaps that can hold on.” He rose.
Young Jolyon looked after him as he walked away, and, resting his head on his hand, sighed.
In the drowsy, almost empty room the only sounds were the rustle of newspapers, the scraping of matches being struck. He stayed a long time without moving, living over again those days when he, too, had sat long hours watching the clock, waiting for the minutes to pass—long hours full of the torments of uncertainty, and of a fierce, sweet aching; and the slow, delicious agony of that season came back to him with its old poignancy. The sight of Bosinney, with his haggard face, and his restless eyes always wandering to the clock, had roused in him a pity, with which was mingled strange, irresistible envy.
He knew the signs so well. Whither was he going—to what sort of fate? What kind of woman was it who was drawing him to her by that magnetic force which no consideration of honour, no principle, no interest could withstand; from which the only escape was flight.
Flight! But why should Bosinney fly? A man fled when he was in danger of destroying hearth and home, when there were children, when he felt himself trampling down ideals, breaking something. But here, so he had heard, it was all broken to his hand.
He himself had not fled, nor would he fly if it were all to come over again. Yet he had gone further than Bosinney, had broken up his own unhappy home, not someone else’s: And the old saying came back to him: “A man’s fate lies in his own heart.”