But he’d suffered enough in exchange. His self-reproaches tortured him. His diary was full of vows that he’d be better, that this miserable bickering should stop. He wildly exaggerated trifles. “Another vile scene this morning,” was an entry which recurred. He’d said to himself: What would Father have thought? Father, who’d left her in his charge. Suppose Father were to come back from the grave, suppose it turned out that he’d never been killed, was a shell-shock case, unidentified, in a far-away hospital—and suddenly his memory returned? This was one of Eric’s nightmares. Father would come back to find that the two people he loved, who’d once loved each other so much, were leading this sordid, miserable life. Eric thought: But I should shoot myself or die of shame.

And yet this existence continued, did not improve. A horrible facility grew upon them, so that they acquiesced in it. And now it had begun to dawn upon Eric that the suffering was not equally shared. His mother, he now knew, did not feel this friction as he did. Often she’d seem even unaware that what he’d later describe as a “vile scene” was taking place. He detected, with sorrow, a certain hardening and blunting of her sensibilities. She could give a sharp answer without realising that she was quarrelling. And this, a reflection of himself in her, gave him more pain than any other aspect of their relationship.

There had been really serious quarrels, of course. Quarrels leaving half-healed wounds which were daily reopened by sarcasms, trivialities.

One day he’d come in tired and found a strange book lying in his bedroom—Mrs. Eddy. He was in an absurd, resentful mood. He remembered a friend of his mother’s whom he disliked, a Miss Prendergast. She lived in the village. All at once he’d seen a vile, a loathsome plot to do a little stealthy propaganda. He’d stalked in to confront his mother:

“How did this book get into my room?”

“What book, darling?”

“This.” He tossed it down on the sofa beside her.

She was annoyed at his rudeness. She answered more coldly:

“I suppose I must have left it there by mistake.”

“Is it yours?”

“It belongs to Miss Prendergast.”

“Then I wish she’d keep it.”

“She lent it to me to read,” said Lily. “It’s very interesting.”

Eric burst out in a tone of ferocious mockery:

“I thought you were such a great Protestant.”

“That doesn’t prevent me from listening to what other people have to say.”

“You think people ought to dabble in every Religion?”

“I think people ought to be broad-minded.”

“You Protestants aren’t very broad-minded about Rome.”

“‘You Protestants,’” she couldn’t help smiling at this; “why, what are you, darling?”

“It doesn’t matter what I am. I’m an ath——” but he couldn’t pronounce the ridiculous word. Turning furiously, he made a violent gesture: “I don’t believe in anything.”

She took it quite seriously, rather disconcerting him, for he was prepared to meet a sneer.