as obliged to walk the few necessary yards and
look at it. A sober corner, with a massive queer-shaped cross of grey
rough-hewn granite, guarded by four dark yew-trees. The spot was free
from the pressure of the other graves, having a little box-hedged garden
on the far side, and in front a goldening birch-tree. This oasis in the
desert of conventional graves appealed to the aesthetic sense of Soames,
and he sat down there in the sunshine. Through those trembling gold
birch leaves he gazed out at London, and yielded to the waves of
memory. He thought of Irene in Montpellier Square, when her hair was
rusty-golden and her white shoulders his--Irene, the prize of his
love-passion, resistant to his ownership. He saw Bosinney's body lying
in that white mortuary, and Irene sitting on the sofa looking at space
with the eyes of a dying bird. Again he thought of her by the little
green Niobe in the Bois de Boulogne, once more rejecting him. His fancy
took him on beside his drifting river on the November day when Fleur
was to be born, took him to the dead leaves floating on the green-tinged
water and the snake-headed weed for ever swaying and nosing, sinuous,
blind, tethered. And on again to the window opened to the cold starry
night above Hyde Park, with his father lying dead. His fancy darted
to that picture of "the future town," to that boy's and Fleur's first
meeting; to the bluish trail of Prosper Profond's cigar, and Fleur in
the window pointing down to where the fellow prowled. To the sight of
Irene and that dead fellow sitting side by side in the stand at Lord's.
To her and that boy at Robin Hill. To the sofa, where Fleur lay crushed
up in the corner; to her lips pressed into his cheek, and her farewell
"Daddy." And suddenly he saw again Irene's grey-gloved hand waving its
last gesture of release.

He sat there a long time dreaming his career, faithful to the scut of
his possessive instinct, warming himself even with its failures.

"To Let"--the Forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his soul,
his investments, and his woman, without check or question. And now the
State had, or would have, his investments, his woman had herself, and
God knew who had his soul. "To Let"--that sane and simple creed!

The waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new forms
only when their destructive flood should have passed its full. He sat
there, subconscious of them, but with his thoughts resolutely set on the
past-