He passed out under the archway, at last no longer — thank goodness!— disfigured by the gun-grey of its search-light.‘They’d better put a search-light on to where they’re all going,’ he thought, ‘and light up their precious democracy!’ Andhe directed his steps along the Club fronts of Piccadilly. George Forsyte, of course, would be sitting in the bay window ofthe Iseeum. The chap was so big now that he was there nearly all his time, like some immovable, sardonic, humorous eyenoting the decline of men and things. And Soames hurried, ever constitutionally uneasy beneath his cousin’s glance. George,who, as he had heard, had written a letter signed “Patriot” in the middle of the War, complaining of the Government’shysteria in docking the oats of race-horses. Yes, there he was, tall, ponderous, neat, clean-shaven, with his smooth hair,hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. Well, he didn’t change! And forperhaps the first time in his life Soames felt a kind of sympathy tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic kinsman. Withhis weight, his perfectly parted hair, and bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that the old order would take some shiftingyet. He saw George move the pink paper as if inviting him to ascend — the chap must want to ask something about hisproperty. It was still under Soames’s control; for in the adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twentyyears back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself almost insensibly retaining control of all purely Forsyteaffairs.

Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. Since the death of his brother-inlaw Montague Dartie, in Paris,which no one had quite known what to make of, except that it was certainly not suicide — the Iseeum Club had seemed morerespectable to Soames. George, too, he knew, had sown the last of his wild oats, and was committed definitely to the joys ofthe table, eating only of the very best so as to keep his weight down, and owning, as he said, “just one or two old screwsto give me an interest in life.” He joined his cousin, therefore, in the bay window without the embarrassing sense ofindiscretion he had been used to feel up there. George put out a well-kept hand.