r hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy
redness of his cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,
compassionate stare. And men kept passing back from business on the way
to their clubs--men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of fog came
into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished. Then even in his
compassion George's Quilpish humour broke forth in a sudden longing to
pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and say:

"Hi, you Johnnies! You don't often see a show like this! Here's a poor
devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty little story of
her husband; walk up, walk up! He's taken the knock, you see."

In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned as he
thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled by the state
of his own affections to catch an inkling of what was going on within
Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth getting wider and wider, and
the fog going down and down. For in George was all that contempt of
the of the married middle-class--peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike
spirits in its ranks.

But he began to be bored. Waiting was not what he had bargained for.

'After all,' he thought, 'the poor chap will get over it; not the first
time such a thing has happened in this little city!' But now his quarry
again began muttering words of violent hate and anger. And following a
sudden impulse George touched him on the shoulder.

Bosinney spun round.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

George could have stood it well enough in the light of the gas lamps, in
the light of that everyday world of which he was so hardy a connoisseur;
but in this fog, where all was gloomy and unreal, where nothing had that
matter-of-fact value associated by Forsytes with earth, he was a victim
to strange qualms, and as he tried to stare back into the eyes of this
maniac, he thought:

'If I see a bobby, I'll hand him over; he's not fit to be at large.'

But waiting for no answer, Bosinney strode off into the fog, and George
followed, keeping perhaps a little further off, yet more than ever set
on tracking him down.

'He can't go on long like this,' he thought. 'It's God's own miracle
he's not been run over already.' He brooded no more on policemen, a
sportsman's sacred fire alive again within him.

Into a denser gloom than ever Bosinney held on at a furious pace; but
his pursuer perceived more method in his madness--he was clearly making
his way w