The hood was down, and fragments of their conversation floated back to Hilary on the road. Aunt Effie blamed herself for not leading up more persuasively to the matter of the school in Switzerland, and reiterated her intention to get Sabrina out of the house as soon as possible. Hilary was enlightened. Threatened with school against her will, Sabrina had run away. Perfectly natural. Just what she expected ultimately to accomplish by that rather childish form of protest he couldn’t see, and he doubted if she could either. Running away is something practically everybody does at least once in a lifetime. Usually one merely arrives back, sadder and wiser, at the starting point. He had not much doubt that Sabrina would be found quite safe, but he meant to go into the matter himself, in case they overlooked anything.

The idea of Sabrina in a girls’ school in Switzerland certainly did not appeal to him. She had come to depend on him now, and she would be miserable without him, he knew. But they were trying to take her away from him. He could follow her, he supposed, wherever they chose to send her, whatever they chose to do—but he found the prospect both difficult and embarrassing. The intricacies of a school régime were enough to tree him entirely. Nor could he contemplate without serious qualms any length of time in the narrow confines of a London flat which would be shared by Bella.

It had been fairly easy, so far, but what was to become of them now? So far as he himself was concerned, he could hang about in the streets until she came out and get a sight of her that way now and then, just to make sure she was well and reasonably happy. It would be fantastically like carrying on some sort of intrigue. He recalled one or two episodes in his very early youth, with unsatisfactory meetings snatched in parks and tea-shops, robbed of all intimacy and leisure, making for misunderstandings and quarrels. At least Sabrina wouldn’t quarrel with him. But the thing she needed from him, a sense of peaceful companionship, would be impossible away from Nuns Farthing.

He perceived that Aunt Effie was running on about alternative remedies, such as a trip to Brittany, en famille—to which Father objected instantly that he couldn’t get away—or a month at the seaside somewhere in England, just Sabrina and herself, and of course Bella. “I don’t think you realize, Alan, that girls at that age are very serious problems. Has it occurred to you that she might work herself up into nervous prostration?”

“I shall get nervous prostration,” interposed Father regrettably, “if you don’t keep an eye on the road!”