Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/404

 "O, no."

"Yes."

"Rut think of it. Think of the sort of man he is—to hide that thing—and let us be married and go away. And I was fooled. What must he have thought?"

She drew him to her.

"It is what he wanted. O,—but how splendid! It is just the big thing in life, Kit, the only thing that matters. To him it mattered so much—that it made him happy."

"Happy!"

"Yes. You'll understand that. You do understand it. What a memory to carry about—in the future."

"What a wound!" he said.

She sighed.

"A memory may be a wound, but what is life without wounds? They are sacred."

Christopher found his father where Thomas Roland had found him a week or so ago, lying in a long chair in his garden, in the midst of his flowers. It was a serene and windless evening, and the face and the eyes of the doomed man shared in this serenity. He held out a thin hand to his son.

"Well, old chap."

And then he saw that Kit knew, for his son's face was unsteady with distress.

"Father, why didn't you tell me?"

Sorrell smiled and was silent, but Kit turned aside, with a hand pressing against the trunk of one of the old fruit trees. He spoke with difficulty.

"I ought to have seen. You gave me everything to fit me for my job,—and yet—when—you wanted me—the very soul's craft of me"

"But I told you a lie. I think it was one of the very few lies."

"But I ought to have seen. You let it all happen and you let us go away—like a couple of blind and selfish fools."

"It was my pleasure, old chap," said his father.