Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/397

 He knitted himself together, and put a clear face upon it. Ne would carry on through that last tour of duty in the trenches, and come out to billets with a stiff smile. After all, there was nothing like sticking it.

He was growing thinner; he observed this,—though his appetite remained fairly good.

On the morning before going up to town, he noticed, while he was shaving himself, that his skin had a faint yellowish tinge.

On the night before the wedding Kit looked suddenly and attentively at his father. He had been absorbed—yes—happily absorbed in that mysterious new future, and now that it was so near he seemed to come back to his normal self for a moment, much like a man who has been packing before a journey and who realizes when he has finished it that a whole night lies between him and the morrow.

They were standing at a window—talking.

"You don't look very fit, pater."

Sorrell smiled a queer, elusive little smile.

"I have been a bit liverish. Smoking too much—perhaps. I am cutting off some of it."

"No pain?"

"O,—nothing."

"Quite sure?"

"Quite."

"No secrets, you know."

"Yes, no secrets, old chap," said Sorrell, somehow feeling that doomed lie sweet under his tongue.

At the reception after the wedding a few of those who best knew Stephen Sorrell noticed a peculiar change in him after the first flush of the crowd's congratulations. He drew a little apart beside an unoccupied sofa, and stood there behind it with an indescribable and vacant look in his eyes. He was very pale. And some of those who loved him well thought that he had drawn apart to bear within himself the stress of some lonely emotion. They left him there, to come