easant admission had to be made to his parents. He
felt he could not go through a scene with her yet, that he could not
endure the task of telling her, of being observed. He turned abruptly to
his left. He walked away as if he had not seen her, across his lawn
towards the little summer-house upon a knoll that commanded the high
road. She called to him, but he did not answer....

He would not look towards her, but for a time all his senses were alert
to hear whether she followed him. Safe in the summer-house he could
glance back.

It was all right. She was going into the house.

He drew the telegram from his pocket again furtively, almost guiltily,
and re-read it. He turned it over and read it again....

_Killed._

Then his own voice, hoarse and strange to his ears, spoke his thought.

"My God! how unutterably silly.... Why did I let him go? Why did I let
him go?"

Section 23

Mrs. Britling did not learn of the blow that had struck them until after
dinner that night. She was so accustomed to ignore his incomprehensible
moods that she did not perceive that there was anything tragic about
him until they sat at table together. He seemed heavy and sulky and
disposed to avoid her, but that sort of moodiness was nothing very
strange to her. She knew that things that seemed to her utterly trivial,
the reading of political speeches in _The Times_, little comments on
life made in the most casual way, mere movements, could so avert him.
She had cultivated a certain disregard of such fitful darknesses. But at
the dinner-table she looked up, and was stabbed to the heart to see a
haggard white face and eyes of deep despair regarding her ambiguously.

"Hugh!" she said, and then with a chill intimation, "_What is it?_"

They looked at each other. His face softened and winced.

"My Hugh," he whispered, and neither spoke for some seconds.

"_Killed_," he said, and suddenly stood up whimpering, and fumbled with
his pocket.

It seemed he would never find what he sought. It came at last, a
crumpled telegram. He threw it down before her, and then thrust his
chair back clumsily and went hastily out of the room. She heard him sob.
She had not dared to look at his face again.

"Oh!" she cried, realising that an impossible task had been thrust upon
her.

"But what can I _say_ to him?" she said, with the telegram in her hand.

The parlourmaid came into the room.

"Clear the dinner away!" said Mrs. Britling, standing at her