kind.

The situation which at this stage might seem, and especially to Forsyte
eyes, strange--not to say 'impossible'--was, in view of certain facts,
not so strange after all. Some things had been lost sight of. And
first, in the security bred of many harmless marriages, it had been
forgotten that Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a
wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown
along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by
chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it
blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and
colour are always, wild! And further--the facts and figures of their
own lives being against the perception of this truth--it was not
generally recognised by Forsytes that, where, this wild plant springs,
men and women are but moths around the pale, flame-like blossom.

It was long since young Jolyon's escapade--there was danger of a
tradition again arising that people in their position never cross the
hedge to pluck that flower; that one could reckon on having love, like
measles, once in due season, and getting over it comfortably for all
time--as with measles, on a soothing mixture of butter and honey--in the
arms of wedlock.

Of all those whom this strange rumour about Bosinney and Mrs. Soames
reached, James was the most affected. He had long forgotten how he had
hovered, lanky and pale, in side whiskers of chestnut hue, round Emily,
in the days of his own courtship. He had long forgotten the small house
in the purlieus of Mayfair, where he had spent the early days of his
married life, or rather, he had long forgotten the early days, not the
small house,--a Forsyte never forgot a house--he had afterwards sold it
at a clear profit of four hundred pounds.

He had long forgotten those days, with their hopes and fears and doubts
about the prudence of the match (for Emily, though pretty, had nothing,
and he himself at that time was making a bare thousand a year), and that
strange, irresistible attraction which had drawn him on, till he felt he
must die if he could not marry the girl with the fair hair, looped so
neatly back, the fair arms emerging from a skin-tight bodice, the fair
form decorously shielded by a cage of really stupendous circumference.

James had passed through the fire, but he had passed also through the
river of years which washes out the fire; he had experienced the