Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/374

 ments when he felt that he must leave everything; crush on his hat, and rush out to find her, somehow and somewhere. He had nothing to say. It was just a torrential and inevitable impulse, a crave, both physical and spiritual. He wanted to see her, to be sure that she existed, to inhale the perfume of her existence, to feed his heart upon it.

On the second night he talked to his father, like the boy-man that he was. They sat near an open window, with the dusk gathering, and a few stars pointing the sky above the horizontal darkness of the roofs opposite. Sorrell sat very still, in contrast to the quick and changing movements of his son.

"Well, what was I to do? The big thing, you know, at last, pater. I couldn't play with it. I could not let myself go."

sori had grown impartial, but he had learnt to value security. A nice and elvish cunning tempers a man's maturity, and now that he had made that little green and secret sanctuary for himself and filled it with flowers, life seemed less disturbing. He did not feel things so acutely; he was growing old.

"She won't marry you—because she is keen on her job?"

Kit nodded.

"Says that we are both workers."

"Well, is not that true? Why should a woman marry—when marriage may mean the end of everything—so far as her inspiration is concerned?"

"Pater, do you really believe"

"Marriage as a career? O, for some women, of course. But not for the Molly Pentreaths; not ordinary marriage."

Kit looked infinitely disturbed.

"You agree with her, pater?"

"Oh,—I don't know. Partly. She was willing to give you a good deal, much more than most women are capable of giving. Then, of course, there is Mrs. Grundy, very much alive still, always will be, though she wears a hat instead of a bonnet. Dangerous old lady."

"The problem seems as old as the hills."

"And young as youth. Each generation, and the same old problems dressed up a little differently. What about your own job?"

"It would not suffer."