man atoms; for in spite of the disapproval of that great
body of Forsytes, the Municipal Council--to whom Love had long been
considered, next to the Sewage Question, the gravest danger to the
community--a process was going on that night in the Park, and in a
hundred other parks, without which the thousand factories, churches,
shops, taxes, and drains, of which they were custodians, were as
arteries without blood, a man without a heart.

The instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion, and of love, hiding
under the trees, away from the trustees of their remorseless enemy,
the 'sense of property,' were holding a stealthy revel, and Soames,
returning from Bayswater--for he had been alone to dine at
Timothy's--walking home along the water, with his mind upon that coming
lawsuit, had the blood driven from his heart by a low laugh and the
sound of kisses. He thought of writing to the Times the next morning, to
draw the attention of the Editor to the condition of our parks. He did
not, however, for he had a horror of seeing his name in print.

But starved as he was, the whispered sounds in the stillness, the
half-seen forms in the dark, acted on him like some morbid stimulant. He
left the path along the water and stole under the trees, along the deep
shadow of little plantations, where the boughs of chestnut trees hung
their great leaves low, and there was blacker refuge, shaping his course
in circles which had for their object a stealthy inspection of chairs
side by side, against tree-trunks, of enlaced lovers, who stirred at his
approach.

Now he stood still on the rise overlooking the Serpentine, where, in
full lamp-light, black against the silver water, sat a couple who never
moved, the woman's face buried on the man's neck--a single form, like a
carved emblem of passion, silent and unashamed.

And, stung by the sight, Soames hurried on deeper into the shadow of the
trees.

In this search, who knows what he thought and what he sought? Bread
for hunger--light in darkness? Who knows what he expected to
find--impersonal knowledge of the human heart--the end of his private
subterranean tragedy--for, again, who knew, but that each dark couple,
unnamed, unnameable, might not be he and she?

But it could not be such knowledge as this that he was seeking--the wife
of Soames Forsyte sitting in the Park like a common wench! Such thoughts
were inconceivable; and from tree to tree, with his noiseless step, he
passed.

Once he