walked like
that swaying and erect, remote, unseizable; ever eluding the contact of
his soul! He turned abruptly from that receding vision of the past.

"You'd better attend," he said, "they're coming now!"

But while he stood, grasping her arm, seemingly intent on the head
of the procession, he was quivering with the sense of always missing
something, with instinctive regret that he had not got them both.

Slow came the music and the march, till, in silence, the long line wound
in through the Park gate. He heard Annette whisper, "How sad it is and
beautiful!" felt the clutch of her hand as she stood up on tiptoe; and
the crowd's emotion gripped him. There it was--the bier of the Queen,
coffin of the Age slow passing! And as it went by there came a murmuring
groan from all the long line of those who watched, a sound such as
Soames had never heard, so unconscious, primitive, deep and wild, that
neither he nor any knew whether they had joined in uttering it. Strange
sound, indeed! Tribute of an Age to its own death.... Ah! Ah!... The
hold on life had slipped. That which had seemed eternal was gone! The
Queen--God bless her!

It moved on with the bier, that travelling groan, as a fire moves on
over grass in a thin line; it kept step, and marched alongside down the
dense crowds mile after mile. It was a human sound, and yet inhuman,
pushed out by animal subconsciousness, by intimate knowledge of
universal death and change. None of us--none of us can hold on for ever!

It left silence for a little--a very little time, till tongues began,
eager to retrieve interest in the show. Soames lingered just long
enough to gratify Annette, then took her out of the Park to lunch at his
father's in Park Lane....

James had spent the morning gazing out of his bedroom window. The last
show he would see, last of so many! So she was gone! Well, she was
getting an old woman. Swithin and he had seen her crowned--slim slip of
a girl, not so old as Imogen! She had got very stout of late. Jolyon and
he had seen her married to that German chap, her husband--he had turned
out all right before he died, and left her with that son of his. And he
remembered the many evenings he and his brothers and their cronies had
wagged their heads over their wine and walnuts and that fellow in his
salad days. And now he had come to the throne. They said he had steadied
down--he didn't know--couldn't tell! He'd make the money fly still, he
shouldn't wonder. W