His mind was entirely centred on Pybus, and Johnny had
nothing to do with Pybus. Johnny's mother, yes. Had that stout white-
haired cockatoo suddenly appeared, she would be clutched, absorbed,
utilised to her last white feather. But she didn't appear. She stayed up
in her Castle, serene and supreme.
Joan was very nervous. She stood, a little grey shadow in the grey room,
her hands twisting and untwisting. She was nervous because she was going
to say good-bye to Johnny, perhaps for ever, and she wasn't sure that
she'd have the strength to do it.
Suddenly he was there with her in the room, big and clumsy and cheerful,
quite unaware apparently that he was never, after this, to see Joan again.
He tried to kiss her but she prevented him. "No, you must sit over there,"
she said, "and we must never, at least not probably for years and years,
kiss one another again."
He was aware, as she spoke, of quite a new, a different Joan; he had been
conscious of this new Joan on many occasions during these last weeks. When
he had first known her she had been a child and he had loved her for her
childishness; now he must meet the woman and the child together, and
instinctively he was himself more serious in his attitude to her.
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