Afternoon of a dryad

Synopsis

Michael meets Cousin June, who carelessly spills the beans about Fleur's love affair with Jon. Michael hasn't heard of it before.	Soames, who likes Michael, gives advice. Hold on gently.	The Bicketts are delighted by the Monts' castoffs.	Old Forsyte and Old Mont go to confront Elderson with Butterfield's accusation.
Elderson immediately and viciously sacks Butterfield.	Fleur, society lady, delivers her fluffy dog to distract the nervous artist's model.	Mrs Bickett prepares to sit in the altogether.	Soames explains to Winifred why he's distrustful of Elderson. WInifred assures him that his instincts have always been good.
Butterfield gets a new job: selling books.	Wilfrid makes a ghostly appearance.	Michael feels unloved and nervous about Wilfrid. Fleur reassures him, then tells him she's pregnant.	Wilfrid is clearing out. He has a new batch of poems for Michael to publish.
The painting is finished. Greene seems rather pleased with himself.	Fleur is quite pregnant now.	Butterfield tells a story about calling on Elderson to sell a copy of Old Mont's new book.	Soames is convinced to take a copy of Mont's book. A guinea. Why couldn't they have made it a pound?
Mrs Bickett has made a lot of money from sitting for artists. She wants to know how she can explain it away to her husband, who's bound to be stupidly jealous. Also, he's seen a reproduction of the painting in the newspaper.	Soames visits Elderson, just to see what he's up to. Elderson expresses his gratitude to Soames for the visit, somewhat sarcastically.	Soames runs into Bickett again, and inexplicably gives him more money. One almost suspects Soames of becoming generous in his old age.	Bickett has found that indecent painting, just in time to see Soames buy it. Swine!
Bickett finds his wife's explanation for the money insufficient.

Novels

The latter third of The white monkey, condensed and a little rearranged.

Commentary

When Fleur tells Michael she's pregnant, she says to him that it must have been "the night of the balloon". Thus Soames is quite wrong when he tells Bickett that the balloons did him no good. Also, note how rarely Fleur and Michael have sex. Is this how Galsworthy's marriage worked?