n her that well-remembered glance in
which she had never read anything as a child, except the consciousness
of her existence. And that was enough for a child who had never known
demonstrative affection. But she had lived a life so starved of all
feeling that this was no longer enough for her. What was the good of
telling him the story of all these miseries now past and gone, of all
those bewildering difficulties and humiliations? What she _must_ tell
him was difficult enough to say. She approached it by remarking
cheerfully:

"You haven't even asked me where I am taking you."

He started like a somnambulist awakened suddenly, and there was now some
meaning in his stare; a sort of alarmed speculation. He opened his
mouth slowly. Flora struck in with forced gaiety. "You would never
guess."

He waited, still more startled and suspicious. "Guess! Why don't you
tell me?"

He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward towards her. She got hold of
one of his hands. "You _must know_ first..." She paused, made an
effort: "I am married, papa."

For a moment they kept perfectly still in that cab rolling on at a
steady jog-trot through a narrow city street full of bustle. Whatever
she expected she did not expect to feel his hand snatched away from her
grasp as if from a burn or a contamination. De Barral fresh from the
stagnant torment of the prison (where nothing happens) had not expected
that sort of news. It seemed to stick in his throat. In strangled low
tones he cried out, "You--married? You, Flora! When? Married! What
for? Who to? Married?"

His eyes which were blue like hers, only faded, without depth, seemed to
start out of their orbits. He did really look as if he were choking.
He even put his hand to his collar...

"You know," continued Marlow out of the shadow of the bookcase and
nearly invisible in the depths of the armchair, "the only time I saw him
he had given me the impression of absolute rigidity, as though he had
swallowed a poker. But it seems that he could collapse. I can hardly
picture this to myself. I understand that he did collapse to a certain
extent in his corner of the cab. The unexpected had crumpled him up.
She regarded him perplexed, pitying, a little disillusioned, and nodded
at him gravely: Yes. Married. What she did not like was to see him
smile in a manner far from encouraging to the devotion of a daughter.
There was something unintentionally savage in it. Old de