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His thoughts flew to Elizabeth. Everything was changed now, as to
Elizabeth. He would have to be very certain of that past of his before
he could tell her that he loved her, and he had a sense of immediate
helplessness. He could not go to David, as things were. To Lucy?
Probably he would have gone to Lucy at once, but the telephone rang.
He answered it, got his hat and bag and went out to the car. Years with
David had made automatic the subordination of self to the demands of the
practice.
At half past six Lucy heard him come in and go into his office. When he
did not immediately reappear and take his flying run up the stairs to
David's room, she stood outside the office door and listened. She had a
premonition of something wrong, something of the truth, perhaps. Anyhow,
she tapped at the door and opened it, to find him sitting very quietly
at his desk with his head in his hands.
"Dick!" she exclaimed. "Is anything wrong?"
"I have a headache," he said. He looked at his watch and got up. "I'll
take a look at David, and then we'll have dinner. I didn't know it was
so late."
But when she had gone out he did not immediately move. He had been going
over again, painfully and carefully, the things that puzzled him, that
he had accepted before without dispute. David and Lucy's reluctance to
discuss his father; the long days in the cabin, with David helping him
to reconstruct his past; the spring, and that slow progress which now he
felt, somehow, had been an escape.
He ate very little dinner, and Lucy's sense of dread increased. When,
after the meal, she took refuge in her sitting-room on the lower floor
and picked up her knitting, it was with a conviction that it was only a
temporary reprieve. She did not know from what.
She heard him, some time later, coming down from David's room. But he
did not turn into his office. Instead, he came on to her door, stood for
a moment like a man undecided, then came in. She did not look up, even
when very gently he took her knitting from her and laid it on the table.
"Aunt Lucy."
"Yes, Dick."
"Don't you think we'd better have a talk?"
"What about?" she asked, with her heart hammering.
"About me." He stood above her, and looked down, still with the
tenderness with which he always regarded her, but with resolution in his
very attitude. "First of all, I'll tell you something. Then I'll ask you
to tell me all you can."