Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/386

 "He wishes to keep his arm. I think he is right."

No one said a word, but old Gaunt seemed to toss his head like a restive war-horse, and Orange stared at the wall as though he were looking through it into some other world. Only—Sorrell the father made a sound, a sort of sound as of something breaking in him. And instantly she was with him, slipping her arm through his, and pressing it firmly.

In the taxi she sat very erect, holding his hand, and looking out of the window.

"I think he was right. To you it must seem such wanton and cruel waste. But—I still hope."

Sorrell had passed beyond hope. He was feeling as old as sorrow, a fatalist, and her hope seemed to him a mere flutter of helpless wings.

"They—don't hold out any hope."

"Those wise men! But Kit wants to live."

She smiled at the passing show in the fretful streets, and if there was any radiance left in life she had brought it with her from that bedside. Sorrell's lamp was out. He sat in that inward darkness, thinking of yesterday as some impossibly serene and very distant past.

It was she who paid for the taxi, and in Kit's empty dining-room she took off her hat and laid it on the sideboard.

"I am staying here. I can sleep on a sofa."

"No need for that," he said dully; "they can fix you up a bed. I'm glad you are staying."

He wandered about the room, looking at the furniture and the china and the pictures, and her next glimpse of his face warned her that a mood of mockery had been forced upon him.

"All this! I collected every piece. Like the war, being blown to bits—for next to nothing."

"O, no," she said; "things do matter."

His wide eyes remained fixed upon hers. She puzzled him, the change in her, this flippant and brilliant thing grown suddenly deep and compassionate. The whole quality of her was different. Before she had made him think of a clean, cold, audacious dawn, with a little frost in the air. But now! Even her voice had a new meaning.

"I suppose you have had nothing to eat?"