What'a come to the town I don't know. A year ago the matter
would have been simple enough...anything so obvious...."
He sat in his old arm-chair, whence for so many years he had delivered his
decisive judgments. No decisive judgments tonight! He was really tired,
lying back, his eyes closed, his hands twitching ever so slightly on his
knees.
Joan sat near to him, struggling to overcome her fear. She felt that if
only she could grasp that fear, like a nettle, and hold it tightly in her
hand it would seem so slight and unimportant. But she could not grasp it.
It was compounded of so many things, of the silence and the dulness, of
the Precincts and the Cathedral, of whispering trees and steps on the
stairs, of her father and something strange that now inhabited him like a
new guest in their house, of her loneliness and of her longing for some
friend with whom she could talk, of her ache for Johnny and his
comforting, loving smile, but most of all, strangely, of her own love for
her father, and her desire, her poignant desire, that he should be happy
again. She scarcely missed her mother, she did not want her to come back;
but she ached and ached to see once again that happy flush return to her
father's cheek, that determined ring to his voice, that buoyant confident
movement to his walk.
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