rning.
How pale he had looked ... how worn. She could not sleep. Her head and
heart both were burning. Now Loring's face came before her. It blended
with Amaldi's, blurring it, blotting it out. Now it was Cecil who looked
straight at her with hard, angry eyes. "Where is my son, eh?... What
have you done with my son?" he seemed to say.

She rose from the bed finally, lighted a candle and began to pack her
travelling bags. As soon as daylight came, she asked Rosa to make her
some coffee. Then, in spite of the woman's protests, helped her with the
other packing. Once when they were folding Bobby's little garments, she
put down her head on Rosa's shoulder and began to sob. Then she
controlled herself again. She would need all her strength for the hours
and days that lay before her.

LV

Later in the morning, when she was on her way to the station alone with
Amaldi, it was even worse, but she had no temptation to cry now. This
new pain that had sprung suddenly to life in her had the searing quality
of hot iron. She kept stealing glances at his face, as he sat beside her
in the gondola looking straight ahead, his under-lids drawn slightly up.
It gave him a queer, short-sighted yet uncanny look, as though he were
trying to focus some apparition of the future. He was thinking:

"If she has to choose between me and her son--she will choose her son."

Sophy was thinking:

"How long will it be before I see him again?... What if I never see him
again?" She felt as if some inner force were tearing her in two. She had
just begun to realise that in finding Bobby again she might lose Amaldi.

She put her hand on his.

"Marco...." she whispered. Her voice was full of fear and pain.

His hand turned under hers, clasped it tight. He looked at her but said
nothing.

"I'm afraid...." she whispered again. "Not only about Bobby ... about
us...."

"I know," he said this time.

He tried to think of some words of comfort, but they would not come. He
was obsessed by the suffocating pain of his desire to help and guard her
in this dreadful crisis, and the knowledge that the only thing he could
do for her was to keep away, to let her take that long, anxious journey
alone. At the time when she needed him most he could do nothing. His
love was powerless. It was because of his love that this dark thing had
come upon her. He said at last, rather mechanically:

"When you see the solicitor, things will clear, I feel certain....
Y