And while they walked Jolyon pondered those words: “I hope you’ll treat him as you treated me.” That would depend on himself. Could he trust himself? Did Nature permit a Forsyte not to make a slave of what he adored? Could beauty be confided to him? Or should she not be just a visitor, coming when she would, possessed for moments which passed, to return only at her own choosing? “We are a breed of spoilers!” thought Jolyon, “close and greedy; the bloom of life is not safe with us. Let her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not. Let me be just her standby, her perching-place; never⁠—never her cage!”

She was the chink of beauty in his dream. Was he to pass through the curtains now and reach her? Was the rich stuff of many possessions, the close encircling fabric of the possessive instinct walling in that little black figure of himself, and Soames⁠—was it to be rent so that he could pass through into his vision, find there something not of the senses only? “Let me,” he thought, “ah! let me only know how not to grasp and destroy!”