d he could hear the calm ticking of the clock in the kitchen and see
the red glint of the kitchen fire against the wall. Then he entered,
looking and feeling apologetic.

His father was all curtained in; his slippered feet on the fender of the
blazing hearth, his head cushioned to a nicety, the long paper-knife
across his knees. And the room was really hot and in a glow of light.
Darius turned and, lowering his face, gazed at Edwin over the top of his
new gold-rimmed spectacles.

"Not gone to chapel?" he frowned.

"No! ... I say, father, I just wanted to speak to you."

Darius made no reply, but shifted his glance from Edwin to the fire, and
maintained his frown. He was displeased at the interruption. Edwin
failed to shut the door at the first attempt, and then banged it in his
nervousness. In spite of himself he felt like a criminal. Coming
forward, he leaned his loose, slim frame against a corner of the old
piano.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THREE.

"Well?" Darius growled impatiently, even savagely. They saw each
other, not once a week, but at nearly every hour of every day, and they
were surfeited of the companionship.

"Supposing I wanted to get married?" This sentence shot out of Edwin's
mouth like a bolt. And as it flew, he blushed very red. In the privacy
of his mind he was horribly swearing.

"So that's it, is it?" Darius growled again. And he leaned forward and
picked up the poker, not as a menace, but because he too was nervous.
As an opposer of his son he had never had quite the same confidence in
himself since Edwin's historic fury at being suspected of theft, though
apparently their relations had resumed the old basis of bullying and
submission.

"Well--" Edwin hesitated. He thought, "After all, people do get
married. It won't be a crime."

"Who'st been running after?" Darius demanded inimically. Instead of
being softened by this rumour of love, by this hint that his son had
been passing through wondrous secret hours, he instinctively and without
any reason hardened himself and transformed the news into an offence.
He felt no sympathy, and it did not occur to him to recall that he too
had once thought of marrying. He was a man whom life had brutalised
about half a century earlier.

"I was only thinking," said Edwin clumsily--the fool had not sense
enough even to sit down--"I was only thinking, suppose I did want to get
married