k 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, arid 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
her picture 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 blueish 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--as a man might ride into a wild night wit