Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/287

 when you arrive on the staff—that will be the time when you will need capital. I'm saving money, quite a lot of money."

Christopher, with his two fists under his chin, stared at the fire.

"How is it, pater, that you never bargain?"

"Why—bargain?"

"You never exact—terms. You have given me everything, my chance,—and freedom. You have never tried to tie me down."

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Very—in some ways."

"One gives to get—the thing that is worth getting."

"You are a great man, pater," said his son.

Plucking the red fruit from time to time Christopher found the juice of it sadder and less sweet; sad because of its lessened sweetness, and his sense of being responsible for its lessened sweetness. And why? Because he had tired,—because embraces became more tranquil and comradely, and because that more tranquil comradeship that is marriage at its best had in this case no future?

He owned to moods, moods of tenderness and of pity and of impatience, moods when he accused himself of taking and losing, of thinking less of the woman, and more of his work. He was Kennard's house-surgeon; he was a resident at St. Martha's; the Brunswick Square days: were over. And he was reading hard for the final of his Fellowship.

For months he had had a sense of drifting, and his character was not that of a drifter. The romance had begun to worry him; for it had become too real, nor was he one of those cheery egoists who can satisfy himself that an incident is just an incident and nothing more. For the man it is so—in the majority of cases, and also for a certain type of woman, but Mary was not that sort of woman.

He realized her generosity. She had never asked him to "put her right with the world" as the phrase goes, nor had she even hinted at it, for Mary Jewett had felt right with herself. She was a giver, she had had times of very