“Father was terribly afraid of feeling, you see. And that fear made him cruel, especially cruel to Edward. They were like two highly charged batteries that short-circuited each other. If only once the current could have flowed through …” she said, knowing as she said it that it was like crying for the moon. For their father had been incapable of a spontaneous gesture. For a moment Isabel was silent, seeing her father coming toward her as if from a long distance away, so stiff-looking in his pince-nez and high collar, in his severely cut suit and black boots, a brief case in one hand. Every evening when she was a little girl she had waited for him at the corner, run to meet him, to be swung up into the air, to walk sedately the rest of the way holding his hand, and this was possible just because it was a routine she saw now, because in fact it asked nothing of her father, nothing that he could not give. Whereas Edward wanted only to break the routine, to get through, to be recognized as himself, not as the idea of a son, wouldn’t compromise, wouldn’t take a crumb of love when he wanted the whole loaf.

“Did Edward have many friends?”

“Where are we anyway?” Bel peered out into the fog.

“Nowhere,” and Henry chuckled. “We’ve got another half hour of this, don’t worry. But you might light me a cigarette.”

She lit the cigarette, thinking about Henry’s question. “He had friends, but they were always queer people, bums like the Donovans, not kids he could bring to the house. It seemed as if in the house there was only Mother. He and Mother had a real thing together——”

“I thought so.”

Bel remembered how when their mother looked at Edward her whole face seemed to light up from way down inside.… “He’d come running up the path with a report card to show her, or a poem he liked, always something wonderful.”

“Mothers and sons,” Henry said a bit ironically.

“I expect it’s an old story,” Bel answered, flushing, “but when I was growing up, it didn’t seem that way to me. I minded terribly. You see she always treated Edward as if he were her equal, grown-up—even when she scolded him, it was different. She was hard on him, and with me she was indulgent, but I would have given a good deal to see that severe look in her eyes.”

“And she didn’t mind about the Donovan boys?”