“How can you?” she said. “I mean, how will you?” “He had some shares in it himself, hadn’t he?” Joan asked.!

“I like the articles you are writing on the History of Superstition. Quite illuminating,” remarked Mr. Simson. “Dad,” she cried, “are you here?”

“You’re not playing the game,” whispered Joan, shaking her head. “I only promised on condition that you would try to get well.” She had gone down to Liverpool, intending to persuade her father to leave the control of the works to Arthur, and to come and live with her in London; but had left without broaching the subject. There were nights when she would trapse the streets till she would almost fall exhausted, rather than face the solitude awaiting her in her own rooms. But so also there were moods when, like some stricken animal, her instinct was to shun all living things. At such times his presence, for all his loving patience, would have been as a knife in her wound. Besides, he would always be there, when escape from herself for a while became an absolute necessity. More and more she had come to regard him as her comforter. Not from anything he ever said or did. Rather, it seemed to her, because that with him she felt no need of words. “He is so afraid you may not be able to wear it—that it will not fit you,” said Mary, “but I told him I was sure it would.”