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.