Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/266

 "I see the beauty in woman, pater. It can't be wrong—somehow, and yet one is so tied up."

"It's just—woman," said his father; "and it is natural. I can't advise you. But half the women one wants aren't the women one could live with. Sex is an incident. It has gained an artificial importance from the fact that we have to suppress it."

"You did?"

"Mostly. Not always. One can't always. But I don't think that I ever hurt anybody. Mutual agreement. And then—of course"

His face looked deeply lined.

"I went and married the wrong woman. And yet she gave me you. The whole thing is such a muddle. We get hustled through life almost before we realize it. If I had it again I should always say to myself—'Don't hurry,' It's the hurry that lands one, our hungry haste. Besides—there must always be the one—right woman."

"I suppose so," said Kit thoughtfully, "and I have a sort of feeling, pater, that one owes something to her."

Kit had one of Thomas Roland's songs running in his head.

It was the month of June, and seven o'clock in the evening, and in Tottenham Court Road Kit had bought three red roses from a flower seller. He saw the sunlight upon the trees and shrubs of the square, and it seemed to him that they were very green for London trees. The sky looked more blue. Four girls were playing tennis in the garden, and one of the girls wore a yellow silk jumper, and had black hair. The girl in Roland's song had black hair, and so had the imagined girl who haunted Christopher's heart.

Kit slipped his latchkey into the door. It seemed a pity to go in and shut the door, and he knew that if he sat at the window and tried to read he would find himself watching those girls.

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Sorrell."

Mrs. Gibbins, grown grey, and standing in her doorway