“You are full of health, Jane. I am full of sickness—sickness of soul, I suppose. When I see my father now, having such a struggle to lift a spoon to his mouth, I feel so much pity for him. You see, I am like that inside. I am a sort of paralytic person inside.”

“Sybille doesn’t help? She seems such a life-giver.”

“Yes, but I feel I am a constant drain. She has lived with my depressions, my moods, my calamitous attempt to be done with it all. How can one have a real relationship with a man like me? She treats me like a dangerous animal who must be treated very carefully or it will turn and rend.”

“No,” Jane said quietly. It was not clear what she meant. Perhaps she didn’t know herself. “No … you were meant to be a serious naturalist. I wish you would go back to the moths, John. There’s work to be done!”

“I have to earn—try to anyway. The business is a big joke, but we do just eke a living out of it. And the routine, going to the office—well, at least it gets me out of the house. Listen, Jane, I’m fifty. I feel the important thing is to last it out for the children. They’re what really matters now. That’s what I try to say to myself, how I keep the demons down.”

“It’s absurd to be making envelopes, or whatever it is you do, when you have the curiosity and mind you have. I’ve always felt it absurd. Your father was very wrong to set you up in that way.”

“Father was terrified—wanted to push me into some slot where he would still have control, where he could keep an eye on things. Father did his best—I have come to see that lately. Poor man, I was an ugly duckling.”

“Of all the boys who have come and gone out of this house you were the most interesting. I have always considered that you had a touch of genius, John.”

“Oh, well,”—he pounded his knee with a closed fist, but it was not a gesture of defiance, or will, simply a nervous tic—“I just don’t have the brute power, the ambition, drive. Nothing drives me hard from inside. Isn’t it interesting, Jane, that Nick has suddenly turned so wild? He always seemed so mild—mild as milk. I do wish I could have seen him knock down those men!” John laughed with the pleasure of the thought.

They were startled and dismayed then to hear a gentle knock at the door.

“Oh, dear,” Jane whispered. “How awful! Who can it be?”

John got up and went to see, and there, of all people, was Nick, holding a huge dead owl in his hands.

“Good heavens, Nick!”