At five o'clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar between his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea.

He was tired, and before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep.

A fly settled on his hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the drowsy silence, his upper lip under the white moustache puffed in and out.

From between the fingers of his veined and wrinkled hand the cigar, dropping on the empty hearth, burned itself out.
The gloomy little study, with windows of stained glass to exclude the view, was full of dark green velvet and heavily-carved mahogany--a suite of which old Jolyon was wont to say: 'Shouldn't wonder if it made a big price some day!' It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more for things than he had given.
In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his great head, with its white hair, against the cushion of his high-backed seat, was spoiled by the moustache, which imparted a somewhat military look to his face.

An old clock that had been with him since before his marriage forty years ago kept with its ticking a jealous record of the seconds slipping away forever from its old master.
He had never cared for this room, hardly going into it from one year's end to another, except to take cigars from the Japanese cabinet in the corner, and the room now had its revenge.
His temples, curving like thatches over the hollows beneath, his cheek-bones and chin, all were sharpened in his sleep, and there had come upon his face the confession that he was an old man.
He woke.