The dinner at the Plaza, described at length and extravagantly illustrated in a dozen papers, was hardly a greater personal triumph than the farewell scenes on board the Lithuania. Ambassadors honoured and beloved had left in less magnificence. Scores of his friends came on board to bid Eric good-bye; the management of the Grafton filled his state-room with hot-house roses, and he was loaded with presents ranging from a gold cigar-case to an unsinkable swimming-suit; German submarines were being recalled, but his friends would not expose him to the risk of a belated straggler or of a forgotten mine-field.

As the land receded and vanished, Eric turned away from the rail and went below. He had been watched ever since he came on board; round, wondering eyes followed the coming and going of his friends, interested and envious eyes explored the parcels which mounted like a rampart on the deck more quickly than his steward could carry them away. Eager whispers rippled about him, becoming hushed at his approach. So Irving and Melba had travelled—in regal state and more than regal loneliness.

He spent the first day in his cabin, unpacking and re-packing, while his steward contrived supplementary cases for his spoils. In the saloon, which he was the last to reach and the first to leave, his seat was between Lady Woodstock, who seemed afraid to speak, and Lady John Carstairs, who retired from sight at the first roll of the boat. The passenger-list was made up almost wholly of soldiers and government officials, for the most part unknown to Eric and too much occupied with consultations and reports to force their company upon a man who was conspicuously avoiding it. John Gaymer, whom he had met at long intervals during three or four years and who had been seconded as an instructor at one of the American aerodromes, made a facetious comment on the Plaza dinner as an overture of friendship before asking him to play poker; and David O’Rane, returning from a campaign of propaganda in the Middle West, tried to persuade Eric to transfer himself to the Chief Engineer’s table. For the rest, he was left in peace until the third day when, on entering the smoke-room in search of matches, he was caught by Carstairs and pressed to join him for a cocktail. At once and with apparent carelessness, four other men attached themselves to the table and conscientiously offered Eric their compliments on his work and their thanks for the opportunity of meeting him. He acknowledged the tribute with a practised show of gratification and submitted to diffident questions on his method of composition and his theories of art. When at last he excused himself and went out on deck, O’Rane overtook him and suggested a stroll before dinner.

“I’ve hardly had a word with you since we came on board, Eric,” he began. “You’ve not been seedy, have you?”

“No, but I’ve reached an age when I can’t move without running across people I know. From one end of America to the other, in Japan, here... On a ship I like to escape my fellow man and have—a rest... I don’t mean you, of course, but the people who feel they must congratulate me on a play that I wish I’d never written....”

“I’m glad you make an exception in my favour, though I tell you frankly that I’m much too old a friend to be shaken off easily. It must be seventeen years since we first met. D’you remember the Phoenix dinners at Oxford? Jim Loring, Summertown, Draycott, Sinclair—they’re all gone; George Oakleigh—married; you, Jack Waring and me—knocked out to a certain extent; Knightrider and Deganway pursuing the noiseless tenour of their way... You can crowd a great deal into seventeen years....”

“I’ve never forgotten the night when you cast our horoscopes for us,” murmured Eric.

“I’ve sometimes tried to forget it... We were only about twenty, I gave every man ten years’ run. It’s been too frightfully true. D’you remember that even in those days I told you we should turn out one genius? I told you to your face who it would be.”

Eric unlinked his arm on the plea of wanting to refill his pipe. What with knocking out the ashes and sacrificing four matches to a head wind, he gave himself time to become collected.

“One man was to achieve some kind of distinction,” he said with an effort of memory. “And one was to make money... Touch wood and all that sort of thing, but in eighteen months I made more than I thought I could make in a life-time.”

“With fame thrown in,” added O’Rane. “That being so, I couldn’t understand your speech at the Plaza.”

They walked the length of the deck before Eric answered.

“It went down very well,” he protested.

“Oh, yes! And no doubt you looked very nice. The decent women would always fall in love with you because you look delicate and interesting; and the fools because they think you’re spiritual. And I’ve no doubt your button-hole and gestures and lumps in the throat were perfect; you’re an old stage hand. I couldn’t see any of that, but I could hear. You must be careful, old man, before you try to put it over people who can’t see; we hear the very devil of a lot... And you must admit it was a rotten speech for you to make. Perhaps I know as much as most people about your private affairs; it was the yelp of a whipped cur.”

“But—I don’t know what you’re driving at! They gave me a marvellous reception, and I—I let myself go. I told ’em what it meant to me, the years of agony and bloody sweat... God! I laid myself bare and talked about art like a Chelsea poet. It had taken me half my life to get there... And you say it was insincere!”

“As you’d stripped so far, you might have talked about the future a bit,” suggested O’Rane. “It was that silence I heard most distinctly... What are you going to do when you get to England?”

“Get out again as soon as possible.”

“Dear man, you can’t get away from yourself any more than a kitten can catch its own tail. It’s time you pulled yourself together.”

Eric stifled a sigh before it could reach his companion’s too acute hearing.

“I’m a bit tired... As you know so much, you may as well know that, after that dinner, I knelt staring out into the night, thinking it all over; and at the end I had to admit I was beaten,” he added quickly.

“That was what I rudely described as the “whipped cur” note in your speech,” laughed O’Rane. “On my soul and honour, I should think a bit better of you if you’d quietly cut your throat. As you haven’t... Look here, Eric, I’ve had one or two facers in my time; and I think, when the smash has come, the only thing to do is to count the arms and legs that are left and see what show you can make with them. (When I was blinded, I did wander out in the approved “Light That Failed” spirit and try to take a bullet through the brain; but to a certain extent one had lost one’s head, and I’ve never dared tell a soul but George Oakleigh...) It’s no good, I’m sure, preserving an amputated limb in spirits of wine. You forget you’ve lost a hand when you forget you’ve ever had it to lose. Think of yourself as born one-handed; in other words, think of yourself as a new personality; in other words, don’t think of yourself at all. Can you do that?”

“I suppose it can be done if one makes a big enough effort.”

“Then you’ll succeed...”

Find me B Deck, there’s a good fellow. It always takes me about four days to feel my way round a strange ship. You don’t want to talk about this? I thought not... But don’t waste a week of good Atlantic, skulking in a hot stateroom....”

On the following day Eric prospected cautiously among the rest of the passengers. The natural selection common to life on every liner was still in progress: the socially ambitious had struggled to the captain’s table in the saloon; more experienced travellers were making friends with the purser. The government officials, unconsciously jaunty in their tweed caps and life-belts, separated into the corners of the smoking-room and drew up voluminous reports, competing craftily for the services of two overworked and seasick shorthand-writers; the returning soldiers exercised themselves with deck-tennis in the morning and scoured the ship for bridge-players in the afternoon. There were not more than six women on board, and these left Eric alone when they had secured his autograph. A distinction more subtile than that of mere age sent the older men to the feet of Mrs. O’Rane, while the younger ranged themselves round Ivy Maitland. Eric encountered her on the fifth day, looking no more than sixteen in tennis shoes and white stockings, woollen jersey and white Tam-o’-Shanter; she treated him to a friendly “good-morning”, when they met, striding round the deck before breakfast; but her first conversation in New York did not encourage her to make further advances, and there were readier triumphs with Gaymer and the other soldiers of his age.

The three days of deliberate isolation had drawn round Eric a cordon which his fellow-travellers were at first reluctant to penetrate; but, when the coast of Ireland came in sight, the general reserve broke down for a moment: Lady John Carstairs hoped that he would come and see them in London; Sir Matthew Woodstock confessed bluffly to admiration of his plays; and on their last night on board Ivy Maitland, armed with her autograph-book, stalked him to the boat-deck and reminded him of his promise.

“I expect you thought me very forward in New York,” she began brightly. “I did so want to meet you... What are you going to write? Something nice, won’t you?”

“How would ‘Children obey your parents’ do?” asked Eric.

“Oh, I’d rather have nothing than that... You see, you don’t know father, and I do...” She laughed a little impatiently and painted a clever and undutiful picture of their life in the Cromwell Road and her earliest recollection of the overworked junior who returned at half-past eight for a dinner which he persisted in ordering for eight, and of a submissive mother who brewed him cocoa at five o’clock in the morning and was too tired to entertain or be entertained at night. The vacations, consecrated to golf at Brancaster, had enabled the two elder sisters to escape into matrimony with a couple of promising chancery barristers. (The “promise” was largely invented by Mr. Justice Maitland by means of a dilemma which amused his humour and saved his pocket. “If a young man’s worth his salt, he doesn’t want anything from me. If he’s not worth his salt, don’t marry him. Of course, I don’t expect you to listen to anything I say...”). The two brothers had drifted from Cambridge into the army, leaving Ivy to bear the full brunt of her father’s jurisdiction. “It was bad enough before, but I couldn’t go back to it after this.”

“What will you do?,” Eric asked, as he began to write.

“I want to live my own life... work... money of my own,” she answered vaguely. “I don’t want to ask them for leave to go to a dance, leave to do this and that....”

Eric looked for a moment at the petulant little face and made no comment. Ivy Maitland collected other people’s phrases with the undiscriminating energy of a rag-picker; her brain was fermenting with ill-digested theories; but, when she came to put them into practice, ignorance or wilfulness set her doing all the things that she should have instinctively avoided. Decorum habitually took a holiday on board a big liner, but Ivy’s idea of emancipation consisted in sitting on the boat-deck with the least desirable of the returning soldiers. On the second day out, Lady Woodstock had been compelled to detach her from a boisterous ring of cocktail-drinkers in the smoking-room.

“You’re very young, Miss Maitland,” he said at length.

“But I’ve been in all sorts of places. And girls nowadays can take care of themselves... Well, I mustn’t keep you. Every one wants to say good-bye. I wish I were famous!”

As she ran away, Eric settled himself to the exchange of addresses and invitations which always lent an insincere good-will to the last day of a voyage. O’Rane he was careful to avoid, for, after the Plaza dinner and in this new flattering farewell, he felt unable to live up to the greatness which his admirers thrust upon him, however much he might talk of the big effort that he intended to make. In his return to England they saw triumph where he felt only despair. Every mile brought him nearer to streets and houses, theatres and restaurants haunted by the ghosts of his dead life; as the Lithuania steamed majestically into the Mersey, he felt that he was going into action....

As the great ship slowed to a standstill, a boat-load of assertive officials hurried on board. Port authorities, health authorities, emissaries of Scotland Yard... Eric was still idly wondering who they were, when the chief steward thrust a sheaf of telegrams into his hand. Welcome and good wishes, welcome and good wishes... This was a reduced replica of New York! There were telegrams from the family, telegrams from friends, telegrams from the theatre and from half-forgotten societies. He crammed them uncomprehendingly into his pocket, as a short, buoyant figure, rime-white in the mist, lined and mischievous as a monkey, steered towards him and slapped a crushing hand of welcome on to his shoulder.

“Manders!”

“Eric, boy! You bet you never expected to see me here! The company came up three days ago for a fortnight. Your old “Mother’s Son”. And a very fair play, though you did write it. I saw in all the papers that you were coming home and, though they didn’t give the name of the ship, I put my pants on the Lithuania. Good old packet! Crossed on her a dozen times! Now look here! You needn’t wait for the tender; I’ve chartered a motor-launch, and we’ll be ashore half-an-hour before the rest. I hope you’re in no hurry to get back to town, because I’ve ordered a bite of lunch for you at the Adelphi. One or two old friends... I’m mightly glad to see you again, boy.”

He held out his hand a second time, and Eric took it with the unwillingness of embarrassment. This triumphal progress was well enough for America, but he could never live up to it in England. A semicircle of fellow-passengers was watching him, wide-eyed and envious, counting the telegrams which he thrust half-read into his pocket and speculating on the identity of Manders, who could play Marc Antony or Louis Dubedat on the stage and never contrived, in private life, to look anything but a blend of pugilist, publican and book-maker.

“Is the launch here?”

“Right alongside, boy.”

Eric looked round and caught sight of Carstairs.

“I say, have you room for some friends of mine? Lord John Carstairs is carrying a Foreign Office bag; if we can get him ashore before the crowd... And Mr. and Mrs. O’Rane.”

It was late afternoon before Eric found himself locked into a reserved compartment with a dinner-basket, a bottle of champagne and a box of cigars. As the train steamed out of Liverpool, he drew his head in from the window, wrapped a rug round his knees and went to sleep. There seemed nothing else to do. He was still sleeping when he reached Euston. A distracted mob burst from the train in search of taxis, bending under suit-cases and wicker baskets. Eric saw a liveried footman peering into carriage after carriage.

“Mr. Eric Lane? I have a car here for you, sir.” He walked five yards across the platform and entered Manders’ car. “If you’ll tell me what your luggage is, I’ll bring that along, sir,” said the man.

Still not more than half awake, Eric gave the address of his club and sank shyly into a corner of the great limousine.

Next day he resumed possession of his flat and sniffed the vibrant air of London. The first bewilderment of the armistice was yielding place to the excitement of the peace conference and the coming general election. On one pretext or another every second man in club, office and street was escaping from England: an army of delegates was making ready for Paris, a second army was assiduously securing advantageous flats and rooms from which to direct the deliberations of the plenipotentiaries. The restlessness seemed greater than even in the first months of the war, and Eric was thankful for the fevered commotion. As Nelson Millbank had predicted, there was as great a revolution in turning soldiers into civilians as in turning civilians into soldiers: much time must pass before they adapted themselves to their new life. When the dust-clouds cleared away, Eric would have made or found his niche and would no longer have to drive in semiregal state or to slink through the streets like a fugitive from justice.

“Welcome home expect you luncheon to-morrow Thespian one-thirty Gaisford.”

The telegram was the first that Eric had opened on board; it was duplicated to his flat, and, when he entered his club, the squat, Bacchic figure of the doctor dominated the hall; he was prepared on slight provocation to extemporize a party of twenty-four, but, after a glance at Eric, he led him to a table for two and pondered long over the bill of fare.

When they had given their order, each waited for the other to break silence.

“Well, how are you?,” asked the doctor at length, industriously polishing his glasses. “You’re looking better than I’ve seen you any time since you entrusted your valuable young life to my care. For my private satisfaction—and to please your mother—, I’d better run the rule over you—”

“I didn’t think I should escape that,” laughed Eric.

“You’re not fit to look after yourself. You never were and you never will be; and that, friend Eric, is apt to worry your friends. I’ll tell you now, what I didn’t dare tell you before, that it was touch and go whether your lungs would hold out. They’re too valuable a part of the human body to be neglected... What’s Japan like?”

“The same as anywhere else,” Eric answered with a shrug.

The doctor devoted a connoisseur’s scrutiny to the wine-list before speaking again.

“I suppose the English papers reached you?,” he asked at length.

“I heard in Tokio.”

“I was sorry, Eric, very sorry. But I’m glad it’s over.” He hurried on remorselessly to cover the whistle of indrawn breath. “It was killing you. Whether you’re wise to come back so soon—”

“Well, my father’s been very ill,” Eric interrupted.

“I was sorry to hear it. Are you going to stay in England?”

“Yes.”

Gaisford attacked his luncheon and ate for some moments without speaking.

“Is that prudent?,” he asked at length.

“I don’t suppose she’s very keen to meet me.”

The doctor threw up his hands and shook his head ruefully.

“Ah, my friend! That’s where you’re wrong. And your trade should have taught you better than that. A woman doesn’t throw aside a man she’s fond of, a man who was fond of her, if she can possibly keep him; it makes her feel warm and comfortable to have him at call. Mark my words: she’ll try to get you back! If her conscience is clear, she’ll want to prove it’s clear; if her conscience is not quite clear, she’ll never rest till she’s justified herself.”

Eric chewed his lips and looked away out of the window, afraid to trust his own voice.

“Marriage closes all accounts between us,” he muttered. “I’m starting afresh, I’m not going to think about the past, I’m going to forget... I wonder why she married George,” he added inconsequently.

“One woman in a hundred marries the man she wants,” answered Gaisford; “the other ninety-nine look for some one they can at least tolerate.” The bachelor’s love of generalizing about marriage went swiftly to the doctor’s head. “One man ripens the peach, and another always eats it.... Well, George has embarked on the great adventure with his eyes open: every one knows that he wanted to marry Amy Loring, only she was a Catholic; the other woman he’s very fond of, but she’s not the great love of his life. He felt it was time to get married; it was a passionless, restful, convenient marriage for both. Barbara’s last act of independence, by the way, was formally to cut herself adrift from her church....”

Eric felt that his friend was helping him to dismiss the subject with an irrelevancy; but, for all his talk of forgetting, he only wanted to fill in the blank pages of his tragedy. None knew the whole truth. Even the actors were familiar only with their own lines and scenes. Of the first act he himself only knew that Barbara had played with Jack Waring until he lost his head and embraced her faith in the hope of marrying her: she continued playing until a panic rush of superstition persuaded her that she had imperilled Jack’s soul and must offer herself blindly in reparation.... He did not know why Jack had cast her aside after keeping them both stretched on a rack for more than a year. And Jack did not know that his best friend prayed nightly for his death so that Barbara might be free to marry him. And, with her wild haze of superstition and conscience, devotion and vanity, passion and pose, no one could guess what Barbara knew....

A knot of members turned aside from the pay-desk and came up with congratulations and welcome. Eric was caught up and carried along with them until it was time for him to return with the doctor and have himself examined. That night he left London for Hampshire. The sight and smell of Waterloo were a new and unexpected pain, for the six-ten was a Winchester and Crawleigh train: Eric had travelled by it a dozen times with Barbara and, though he knew her to be away from London, he reconnoitred the filling carriages as though he feared that she would spring out and attack him. Once inside an empty compartment, he hid behind his paper, refusing to look up when the door opened and only rousing when a hand gently patted his knee and Jack Waring’s voice enquired with surprise:

“Well, Eric, old man, when did you get back? And what sort of time did you have? D’you know I’ve not seen you for nearly four and a half years? When I came home after being a prisoner, I always missed you. Then you went off to America... Tell me all about yourself, old son!”

The voice was unmistakably cordial, and from Waterloo to Winchester the two men discussed themselves and each other. Jack Waring’s head-wound had incapacitated him for work indoors; after a dozen failures he was abandoning the bar and taking to horse-breeding in Worcestershire; two friends, equally maimed by the war, were coming into partnership with him.

“And there I propose to end my days,” he said. “Thirty-five’s a bit old to be making a new start; but I’m alive, when I didn’t expect to be, and that’s something.”

Eric nodded and looked out of the window at the familiar glimmering lights of south-west London. In different ways but in equal measure Barbara had spoiled both their lives; both must know it; and, now that she had left them for ever, there was a dramatic fitness in their rebuilding an old friendship out of their common experience and disaster. This was the fourth act of their play; and, after the catastrophe, the survivors could meet and prospect to see what remained... In the gleaming mirror of the window, Eric studied the reflection of his companion’s face; he was glad to hear that Jack was going away to the other side of England; after all, the old friendship could never be revived when one had prayed aloud for the death of the other... He looked up, startled and conscience-stricken; he had been mad, but it was Barbara who made him mad, and Jack’s friendship was part of the price which she exacted.

“I’ve read all about you in the papers, of course,” said Jack, “but I’ve not seen you in the flesh since the first months of the war. Do you remember when you were ill and I walked over to talk to you? I’d just got my commission.”

“I remember.” Eric mustered all his courage and plunged before it had time to evaporate. “I’ve seen you once since—in the distance. You and your father and mother and Agnes came to a first night of mine—”

“Were you there?,” Jack asked in surprise. “I came up on purpose to see you.”

“Only for a moment. I’d been ill again and I was supposed to be in bed. I saw the first act from a box, but I couldn’t sit it out. You were all in the front row of the stalls—”

“Oh, I remember it well.”

Eric hurried on desperately:

“It was almost your first public appearance since you got back from Germany. Every one was congratulating you. George Oakleigh... and Barbara Neave.” He paused, but Jack’s face told him nothing. “They were there, I remember. When I was in Japan, I saw that they’d married.”

“Yes.”

Nothing more was coming, and Eric was forced to admire Jack’s restraint.

“That was the last time I set foot in a theatre,” he ended carelessly. “I suppose I shall have to begin again... I’ve been ill off and on for some time, and it’s like making a new start with me... By the way, I met Raney on the boat from New York. D’you remember when you and I came down from Oxford for the last time? I always felt the night before was like a vigil. The dawn of a new life, a new world...” His voice became wistfully reflective; but Jack, as ever, prosaically declined to share his reverie. “It’s easier to feel that at twenty-one than at thirty-five...” Eric went on with a laugh. “But I suppose one must try... When do you start for Worcestershire?”

“To-morrow. I’m only coming here to pick up clothes and say good-bye. You know Agnes is married? And I hear your sister Sybil’s engaged... I don’t suppose I shall see you again.”

“Not at present, I’m afraid.”

They shook hands at Winchester, and Eric dawdled behind to identify his luggage. He never wanted to see Jack again. Sometime he must walk over to Red Roofs and pay his respects to the family, but he would not go until Jack was safely out of the way. If possible, he would avoid the house altogether, for he never wanted to see Agnes since her marriage. Five years earlier he had fancied that he would like to make her his wife; in those days they would have been very happy together; but Barbara had spoiled his palate for other women....

A car, driven by his sister, was awaiting him, and on the familiar road out of the town, through the dripping Lashmar Woods and across the water-logged common to the Mill-House, he listened to tidings of the family. His father was making an unexpectedly good recovery; his brother Geoffrey was home on leave from the North Sea; Basil was on his way from Salonica; Lady Lane, though worried and anxious, was very well.

“And what about you, Sybil?” Eric asked conscientiously. The feeling which he had suspected in Tokio, when he received the news of her engagement, returned to perplex and oppress him; he was not interested in his family. “Tell me about this man you’re marrying,” he added quickly.

“I’m very well, thanks. And very glad to see you again, Ricky.”

Her fingers slid down from the wheel and squeezed his hand. Outward affection from one so undemonstrative as Sybil was rare. Perhaps it was not wholly her pleasure at having him back; he wondered how much they had heard and guessed....

The doors were thrown open at the first sound of the horn, and Lady Lane stood silhouetted against the lemon light of the hall with her husband beside her, leaning on her shoulder. Eric hailed them and sprang out of the car, sniffing the well-remembered scent of pine-logs and submitting to a long inspection before he was allowed to take off his coat. The house, low, warm and homely, was unchanged, his mother was unchanged, the servants were unchanged; Geoffrey came out of the library with his invariable, half-cleaned gun under his arm and the inseparable retriever at his side; only Sir Francis seemed older and more gaunt, speaking a little indistinctly and glad of an arm when he walked.

After the triumphal send-off in New York, the splendid isolation of the voyage and his reception in Liverpool, Eric subsided gratefully into the tranquillity of Lashmar Mill-House. Nobody here expected him to play a part, and he could forget the war and put himself back seven years to the time when he was an overworked journalist coming home to sleep eighteen hours in country air, or fourteen years to the time when he was an undergraduate returning across country from Oxford, or twenty-five years to the time when he was a schoolboy, first allowed to bring himself unaccompanied from Broadstairs... He had promised Gaisford, he had in effect promised O’Rane to forget all that had happened since his first meeting with Barbara....

“We’ll dine at once. Don’t wait to unpack or dress,” called out Lady Lane as he ran upstairs to his threadbare, bleak bedroom.

Throughout dinner and the long evening which followed he was kept talking of America and Japan. Sybil sat with her hands clasped round her ankles, eagerly drinking in every word; Geoffrey interjected lazy questions about New York and San Francisco, Hawaii and Formosa; Sir Francis sat lost in thought, hardly listening to what was said but proudly conscious that Eric had won honour on three continents.

“Bed time! You must tell us the rest to-morrow,” said Lady Lane, as the clock struck eleven.

The three children were ready to protest, but she was looking at her husband, whose eyes had closed. Sybil poked the smouldering logs into safety; Geoffrey slipped an arm through his father’s with a careless, “Going up, sir?” Eric was left alone with his mother. He knocked out his pipe and turned to her, with his eyes averted.

“Well, you must be worn out with all your travelling,” she said, after a moment’s silence.

“I’m not very tired... The guv’nor’s better than I expected, mother.”

“Yes, the first days were the worst. I had to cable to you, Eric. If anything had happened... I couldn’t take the risk.”

“But I’m very glad you did.”

“I didn’t want to bring you home.”

Eric found a particle of paper on the carpet. He picked it up and carried it slowly to the fire.

“You knew, then?”

“I guessed, darling.”

“You guessed I never meant to come back.”

“Hush, Eric... I guessed that you probably felt like that. But I hoped that with time—”

“It gets worse every day! I’m waiting, listening for something to go snap in my brain!”

In body or nerves something “went snap,” and he plunged forward, nearly throwing his mother off her balance. She slipped her arm round his waist and walked slowly up and down the room with him. At the door she paused and noiselessly turned the key. He was shaking with dry sobs which seemed to tear him in pieces, and she pulled his head on to her shoulder, running her fingers through his hair and once kissing his neck. Thirty years before she had lifted him out of bed night after night, when he was crying with pain, and walked up and down the nursery with him until he dropped in her arms or fell asleep standing, with his head on her breast.

“You’ve grown so tall,” she whispered.

“Since...? I’m sorry, mother! It’s been such hell. I couldn’t tell you before. That night, when you all came up and dined with me and said good-bye... I meant to clear out for good and all. When we had a submarine alarm, I prayed that we should be torpedoed and sunk. And you knew all the time?”

“I guessed a little bit. Mothers do, you know, darling child....”

“It wasn’t her fault, mother,” said Eric with unsteady emphasis.

“You’d always say that. But it’s over, Eric; have you thought what you’re going to do now?”

“I’m afraid I’m rather damaged goods,” he sighed.

“Too bad to be mended?” She led him to a sofa and sat down with his head on her shoulder and her arms round him. “You’re dreadfully thin, Eric... And you’ve been smoking too much. D’you see? Your fingers are all yellow... Darling boy, I’m afraid you have to make another effort, a big effort. Do you remember the doctors gave you up three times before you were seven? And d’you remember at Broadstairs, when you lived for eight months on the verandah? I’m afraid we’ve given you all the brains of the family and none of the constitution. But you’re not going to give in now. Victory, Eric! This will be the biggest of all... In time—”

He broke away from her arms and buried his face in his hands:

“I’ve had two years!”

“You’ll forget everything, if you can forget yourself. If you could lose yourself altogether in work or in looking after some one—”

There was a single sob, and he had to fight for breath:

“I used to walk up and down all night in front of her house, when she was ill.”

“But that’s over. In time....”

She rose and stirred the fire to a blaze.

“In time...” Eric murmured. He did not want to look after any one. Barbara had destroyed his faith in women.

“It won’t be our first big fight, Eric. In a different way I’ve been fighting all my life. Father. And you. And the babies. And Sybil. I thought everything had come out right, before the war; if you’d been a little bit stronger, Eric, it would have been perfect. When the war came, it was a bigger fight than I’d ever had. You were ill... and I knew you weren’t happy. And anything might have happened to Geoff and Basil. And then, of course, your father’s illness....”

Eric slid on to the floor, resting his head against her knee and gently turning her rings from side to side.

“You don’t get much rest, mother.”

“I’m happier when I have one of you to look after.”

“I feel I’ve been such a brute to you all.”

“Perhaps I understood... Eric, if you want to go away again, I shan’t stop you.”

“No, I’m going back to the old life. I must start work again... and try to feel it’s worth doing. I meant to funk it all, but now I’m determined to win... We won’t talk about this again, mother. I don’t want you to think hardly of her, and you must never let any one attack her... A new life from to-day,” he ended jerkily. “Dawn....”