‘I know, I know,’ said Mrs Kerr, and nodded in helpless contrition. ‘I’m afraid,’ she went on irrelevantly, ‘he feels sore about this——He feels ——’

‘Sore?’ echoed Ronald. ‘Ridiculous! Sore?’

‘I think so, a little … with me,’ said Mrs Kerr, and adjusted the shade of the reading-lamp. Her face by that movement emerged from red dusk and was shown to her son like a picture, lit up: a face lying rather wearily back among cushions, full of lucidity and gentleness; less beautiful at the moment than burning in on his consciousness its essential quality, mental or spiritual, that he could not define. Ronald wondered again if this was what he would learn to call love, or whether he would ever experience any other: this feeling of being burnt in upon that left no room for desire. ‘I half think,’ Mrs Kerr went on reluctantly, as though she were reading out from the confused blotted chart of poor Milton’s mind, ‘that he half thinks I’ve meddled. Of course, I have a kind of influence over Sydney, but I should never have used it to interfere in her love-affairs. I have always wanted her to marry, and seen that she wanted to marry, and though I was surprised just at first that she should be able to think about him in that way, they both seemed so pleased with each other that I should have done a great deal to help them on.’

It was a strange and sudden relief to Ronald – he could not have said why – to hear his mother say all this in her matter-of-fact voice.

‘Poor old Milton,’ he said at once, and could not help laughing. Mrs Kerr also smiled, less and less ruefully as his laughter began to infect her. ‘Poor old chap,’ said Ronald again, noisily. He waited for what was to come next, but his mother seemed to have done speaking. ‘Of course,’ he went on, at the same pitch of jocularity, ‘if it’s a case of the family honour … anything I can do …’

It did sound ridiculous, the way he put it, and Mrs Kerr smiled again. ‘I should feel happier,’ she confessed, ‘if the poor dear went off more or less happily. You see, he does like you.’

‘Oh yes, I dare say he does. I dare say he thinks I have a beautiful expression and wishes I would come and sing in his choir.’

‘Something like that, I dare say. But people are not put in choirs for their beautiful expressions. Seriously, Ronald, I’m doing this because I want to do anything I can for him. It seems a lot to send you away from me sooner than you have to go. You see, I’ll be lonely,’ said Mrs Kerr, and glanced away from the statement distastefully when it was made as though she saw it as ugly and trivial.

‘Oh, mother …’