her come in."

He closed his eyes and opened them again.

"Is that Anne?"

"Yes. Who did you think it was?"

"I don't know...I'm sorry, Anne."

"Darling--" the word broke from a tender inarticulate sound she made.

Then: "Jerrold--," he said.

Jerrold came closer. His father's right arm unfolded itself and
stretched out towards him along the bed.

Anne whispered, "Take his hand." Jerrold took it. He could feel it
tremble as he touched it.

"It's all right, Jerry," he said. "It's all right." He gave a little
choking cough. His eyes darkened with a sudden anxiety, a fear. His hand
slackened. His head sank forward. Anne came between them. Jerrold felt
the slight thrust of her body pushing him aside. He saw her arms
stretched out, and the white gleam of the basin, then, the haemorrhage,
jet after jet. Then his father's face tilted up on Eliot's arm, very
white, and Anne stooping over him tenderly, and her hand with the towel,
wiping the red foam from his lips.

Then eyes glazed between half-shut lids, mouth open, and the noise of
death.

Eliot's arm laid down its burden. He got up and put his hand on
Jerrold's shoulder and led him out of the room. "Go out into the air,"
he said. "I'll tell Mother."

Jerrold staggered downstairs, and through the hall and out into the
blinding sunshine.

Far down the avenue he could hear the whirring of the car coming back
from Cheltenham; the lines of the beech trees opened fan-wise to let it
through. He saw Colin sitting up beside Scarrott.

Above his head a lattice ground and clattered. Somebody was going
through the front rooms, shutting the windows and pulling down the
blinds.

Jerrold turned back into the house to meet Colin there.

Upstairs his father's door opened and shut softly and Anne came out. She
moved along the gallery to her room. Between the dark rails he could see
her white skirt, and her arm, hanging, and the little specks of red
splashed on the white sleeve.

iii

Jerrold was afraid of Anne, and he saw no end to his fear. He had been
dashed against the suffering he was trying to put away from him and the
shock of it had killed in one hour his young adolescent passion. She
would be for ever associated with that suffering. He would never see
Anne without thinking of his father's death. He would never think of his
father's death without seeing Anne. He would see her for ever through an
atmosphere of pain and horror, moving as she had moved in his f