So any respectable Forsyte. Yet, if that sounder citizen could have listened at the waiting lover’s heart, out there in the fog and the cold, he would have said again: “Yes, poor devil! He’s having a bad time!”

Soames got into his cab, and, with the glass down, crept along Sloane Street, and so along the Brompton Road, and home. He reached his house at five.

His wife was not in. She had gone out a quarter of an hour before. Out at such a time of night, into this terrible fog! What was the meaning of that?

He sat by the dining-room fire, with the door open, disturbed to the soul, trying to read the evening paper. A book was no good⁠—in daily papers alone was any narcotic to such worry as his. From the customary events recorded in the journal he drew some comfort. “Suicide of an actress”⁠—“Grave indisposition of a Statesman” (that chronic sufferer)⁠—“Divorce of an army officer”⁠—“Fire in a colliery”⁠—he read them all. They helped him a little⁠—prescribed by the greatest of all doctors, our natural taste.