of scent from wet leaves,
alive with the song of birds thanking the sky. Suddenly he felt her arm
round his ribs; either it or they--which, he could not at the moment
tell--seemed extraordinarily soft. . . .

Between Felix and his young daughter, Nedda, there existed the only kind
of love, except a mother's, which has much permanence--love based on
mutual admiration. Though why Nedda, with her starry innocence, should
admire him, Felix could never understand, not realizing that she read his
books, and even analyzed them for herself in the diary which she kept
religiously, writing it when she ought to have been asleep. He had
therefore no knowledge of the way his written thoughts stimulated the
ceaseless questioning that was always going on within her; the thirst to
know why this was and that was not. Why, for instance, her heart ached
so some days and felt light and eager other days? Why, when people wrote
and talked of God, they seemed to know what He was, and she never did?
Why people had to suffer; and the world be black to so many millions?
Why one could not love more than one man at a time? Why--a thousand
things? Felix's books supplied no answers to these questions, but they
were comforting; for her real need as yet was not for answers, but ever
for more questions, as a young bird's need is for opening its beak
without quite knowing what is coming out or going in. When she and her
father walked, or sat, or went to concerts together, their talk was
neither particularly intimate nor particularly voluble; they made to each
other no great confidences. Yet each was certain that the other was not
bored--a great thing; and they squeezed each other's little fingers a
good deal--very warming. Now with his son Alan, Felix had a continual
sensation of having to keep up to a mark and never succeeding--a feeling,
as in his favorite nightmare, of trying to pass an examination for which
he had neglected to prepare; of having to preserve, in fact, form proper
to the father of Alan Freeland. With Nedda he had a sense of refreshment;
the delight one has on a spring day, watching a clear stream, a bank of
flowers, birds flying. And Nedda with her father--what feeling had she?
To be with him was like a long stroking with a touch of tickle in it; to
read his books, a long tickle with a nice touch of stroking now and then
when one was not expecting it.

That night after dinner, when Alan had gone out and Flora into a dream,