w to the Knightsbridge Gate, across a
pasture of short, burnt grass, dotted with blackened sheep, strewn
with seated couples and strange waifs; lying prone on their faces, like
corpses on a field over which the wave of battle has rolled.

He walked rapidly, his head bent, looking neither to right nor, left.
The appearance of this park, the centre of his own battle-field, where
he had all his life been fighting, excited no thought or speculation
in his mind. These corpses flung down, there, from out the press and
turmoil of the struggle, these pairs of lovers sitting cheek by jowl for
an hour of idle Elysium snatched from the monotony of their treadmill,
awakened no fancies in his mind; he had outlived that kind of
imagination; his nose, like the nose of a sheep, was fastened to the
pastures on which he browsed.

One of his tenants had lately shown a disposition to be behind-hand in
his rent, and it had become a grave question whether he had not better
turn him out at once, and so run the risk of not re-letting before
Christmas. Swithin had just been let in very badly, but it had served
him right--he had held on too long.

He pondered this as he walked steadily, holding his umbrella carefully
by the wood, just below the crook of the handle, so as to keep the
ferule off the ground, and not fray the silk in the middle. And, with
his thin, high shoulders stooped, his long legs moving with swift
mechanical precision, this passage through the Park, where the sun shone
with a clear flame on so much idleness--on so many human evidences of
the remorseless battle of Property, raging beyond its ring--was like the
flight of some land bird across the sea.

He felt a--touch on the arm as he came out at Albert Gate.

It was Soames, who, crossing from the shady side of Piccadilly, where he
had been walking home from the office, had suddenly appeared alongside.

"Your mother's in bed," said James; "I was, just coming to you, but I
suppose I shall be in the way."

The outward relations between James and his son were marked by a lack
of sentiment peculiarly Forsytean, but for all that the two were by no
means unattached. Perhaps they regarded one another as an investment;
certainly they were solicitous of each other's welfare, glad of each
other's company. They had never exchanged two words upon the more
intimate problems of life, or revealed in each other's presence the
existence of any deep feeling.

Something beyond the power