To die out there⁠—lonely⁠—wanting them⁠—wanting home! This seemed to his Forsyte heart more painful, more pitiful than death itself. No shelter, no protection, no love at the last! And all the deeply rooted clanship in him, the family feeling and essential clinging to his own flesh and blood which had been so strong in old Jolyon—was so strong in all the Forsytes⁠—felt outraged, cut, and torn by his boy’s lonely passing. Better far if he had died in battle, without time to long for them to come to him, to call out for them, perhaps, in his delirium!

The moon had passed behind the oak-tree now, endowing it with uncanny life, so that it seemed watching him⁠—the oak-tree his boy had been so fond of climbing, out of which he had once fallen and hurt himself, and hadn’t cried!