And though her mother doubted whether attendance at the Professor's
lectures would give Dorothy much insight into the affair, she had her
way. Anthony was too weak to resist her. He pushed the letters towards
her without a word. He would rather she had been left out of it. And yet
somehow the sight of her, coming in, so robust and undismayed and
competent, gave him a sort of comfort.

Dorothy did not agree with Michael. There was more in it than the
Professor's imagination. The Professor, she said, hadn't got any
imagination; you could tell from the way he lectured. But she did not
believe one word of the charge against her brother. Something had
happened and Nicky was screening somebody.

"I'll bet you anything you like," said Dorothy, "it's 'Booster's' wife.
She's made him give his word."

Dorothy was sure that "Booster's" wife was a bad lot.

"Nicky said she was awfully decent."

"He'd _have_ to. He couldn't do it by halves."

"They couldn't have sent him down, unless they'd sifted the thing to the
bottom."

"I daresay they've sifted all they could, the silly asses."

She could have killed them for making her father suffer. The sight of
his drawn face hurt her abominably. She had never seen him like that.
She wasn't half so sorry for her mother who was sustained by a secret,
ineradicable faith in Nicky. Why couldn't he have faith in Nicky too?
Was it because he was a man and knew that these things happened?

"Daddy--being sent down isn't such an awful calamity. It isn't going to
blast his career or anything. It's always touch and go. _I_ might have
been sent down any day. I should have been if they'd known about me half
what they don't know about Nicky. Why can't you take it as a rag? You
bet _he_ does."

Anthony removed himself from her protecting hand. He got up and went to
bed.

But he did not sleep there. Neither he nor Frances slept. And he came
down in the morning looking worse than ever.

Dorothy thought, "It must be awful to have children if it makes you feel
like that." She thought, "It's a lucky thing they're not likely to cut
up the same way about me." She thought again, "It must be awful to have
children." She thought of the old discussions in her room at Newnham,
about the woman's right to the child, and free union, and easy divorce,
and the abolition of the family. Her own violent and revolutionary
speeches (for which she liked to think she might have been sent down)
sounded faint and far