Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/259

 that each sex had to suffer because of the other, and that neither cynicism nor idealism can be relied upon to control the energy of life. The problem was so to direct it that it did not drive people over precipices and into quagmires.

"My whole point is that I don't believe in a man marrying until he is well up the ladder."

"You want him to think more of his job than of his wife?"

"Well,—doesn't a man?"

"And meanwhile"

Sorrell gave a little shrug of the shoulders.

"Perhaps I am prejudiced, Fanny. Life's so big, and for the last ten years or so I have had my eyes on one little figure. Whatever happens he will always get the best from me."

She bent down and kissed his forehead.

"You are a good man, Stephen. I think yours is the sort of goodness that helps other people to make good. If I were Kit's mother"

"You would be worrying like anything."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. People who have been brought up cleanly don't like dirt. And they don't like the sour taste that comes after too much drink. Start a lad with a clean stomach—and it will want to keep itself clean. Don't worry too much."

None the less, when Kit came down to Winstonbury for a week-end the whole of Sorrell's consciousness would be exposed like a sensitive plate hidden behind a lens, ready to register every secret impression.

One winter morning while Sorrell was tying his tie in front of his cottage window, he had one of those moments of illumination, for the world outside his window seemed more real than reality. Real because he saw it in a sudden garment of mystery, and the dimness of the dawn, grey, gradual, yet like the soul of itself, a moon still shining somewhere upon the leafless trees, the grass frosted between night and dawn. The illusion of the material reality departed from him while he stood there. It was as though everything were spirit. He felt the beauty of feeling and of seeing as he did, the illimitable significance of the human