thes, you know. I can't tell
whether he was looking for her. No doubt he was. Whether he recognised
her? Very likely. She crossed the road and at once there was
reproduced at a distance of years, as if by some mocking witchcraft, the
sight so familiar on the Parade at Brighton of the financier de Barral
walking with his only daughter. One comes out of prison in the same
clothes one wore on the day of condemnation, no matter how long one has
been put away there. Oh, they last! They last! But there is something
which is preserved by prison life even better than one's discarded
clothing. It is the force, the vividness of one's sentiments. A
monastery will do that too; but in the unholy claustration of a jail you
are thrown back wholly upon yourself--for God and Faith are not there.
The people outside disperse their affections, you hoard yours, you nurse
them into intensity. What they let slip, what they forget in the
movement and changes of free life, you hold on to, amplify, exaggerate
into a rank growth of memories. They can look with a smile at the
troubles and pains of the past; but you can't. Old pains keep on
gnawing at your heart, old desires, old deceptions, old dreams,
assailing you in the dead stillness of your present where nothing moves
except the irrecoverable minutes of your life.

De Barral was out and, for a time speechless, being led away almost
before he had taken possession of the free world, by his daughter.
Flora controlled herself well. They walked along quickly for some
distance. The cab had been left round the corner--round several corners
for all I know. He was flustered, out of breath, when she helped him in
and followed herself. Inside that rolling box, turning towards that
recovered presence with her heart too full for words she felt the desire
of tears she had managed to keep down abandon her suddenly, her
half-mournful, half-triumphant exultation subside, every fibre of her
body, relaxed in tenderness, go stiff in the close look she took at his
face. He _was_ different. There was something. Yes, there was
something between them, something hard and impalpable, the ghost of
these high walls.

How old he was, how unlike!

She shook off this impression, amazed and frightened by it of course.
And remorseful too. Naturally. She threw her arms round his neck. He
returned that hug awkwardly, as if not in perfect control of his arms,
with a fumbling and uncertain pressure. S