He flung himself down at last in the worn leather armchair, looked at his wife quietly for a moment and then said, “It’s so hard to be sure you’re right. Maybe I was wrong”—he looked at her imploringly. And she knew him well enough to see here his generosity, knew that if he could persuade himself that he had been wrong, he would make an apology, knew that he longed to do just this.

“Oh, darling,” she said warmly, “you and Edward have been drifting apart for some time. This is only the final straw—it would have been something else eventually.”

“It’s a hopeless mess.” Damon took a sip of his drink. “We’d better talk about something else.”

“I must send that sweater to the cleaner’s—it’s covered with spots, Damon.”

“The damnable thing is that I envy Edward his conviction”—Damon paid no attention to her remark. Of course they would not be able to keep away from the one painful subject which was eating Damon up. There was little use in trying.

“Am I just becoming a doddering old fuddy duddy, Julia? Am I crazy?”

“You know what I think? I think that we are having to grow, to change in fundamental beliefs and it’s a painful process—at our age. We took an awful lot of things for granted, Damon, you know?”

“Like what?” he asked suspiciously.

“Well, like that the unions must be right about everything, that Socialism is the answer, that”—she smiled shyly—“oh well, you know what I mean. It’s very disturbing to have to admit that people you hate and despise and know to be narrow in vision, have been, after all, right about a few things.” But Damon had not been listening. He never listened to the words she said. “It’s humiliating,” she said.

“Edward thinks any compromise is a sin. My grandfather would have agreed about that. ‘Stand up and be counted!’ he would roar at the boys, terrified into admitting things they had never done just to give the old man what he wanted.” And Damon laughed suddenly. It always cheered him up to remember his grandfather, whom he had so admired, so hated too, but who appeared to Julia always rather like God in the background, a presence which loomed up before Damon whenever he was troubled in mind.

“Your grandfather was a perfect child, Damon.”