I had to repeat the question. His busy whispering lips stopped for a moment, and he answered in the note of one who repeats a formula.
"She'd like to be in the battle with me. She'd like to be here in London. But there's corners I got to turn alone." His eye rested for a moment on the little bottle beside him. "And things have happened.
"You might go down now and talk to her," he said, in a directer voice. "I shall be down to-morrow night, I think."
He looked up as though he hoped that would end our talk.
"For the week-end?" I asked.
"For the week-end. Thang God for week-ends, George!"
§2
My return home to Lady Grove was a very different thing from what I had anticipated when I had got out to sea with my load of quap and fancied the Perfect Filament was safe within my grasp. As I walked through the evening light along the downs, the summer stillness seemed like the stillness of something newly dead. There were no lurking workmen any more, no cyclists on the high-road.
Cessation was manifest everywhere. There had been, I learnt from my aunt, a touching and quite voluntary demonstration when the Crest Hill work had come to an end and the men had drawn their last pay; they had cheered my uncle and hooted the contractors and Lord Boom.
I cannot now recall the manner in which my aunt and I greeted one another. I must have been very
