“Perhaps another year he’ll take you,” said Violet. She felt no sense of injury in the fact that Dennis wanted to be out there with him, rather than at home with her. She thanked God that it was so, that all these wretched days, when his father had persecuted him, had left no stain on the luminous brightness of his affection. At all costs she wanted that to retain its shining quality. Even if Dennis suffered, he suffered in the cause of love: if he had not loved his father, he would have thought of him now as merely a very disagreeable person whose absence was a matter for congratulation. But even now Dennis wanted to be with him; he was disappointed that his postponed return would rob him of a glimpse before he went back to Eton. “I wonder if he will,” said Dennis. “I wonder----” Violet felt that the boy was on the verge of speech. She drew him back against her knees, encompassing his shoulders. “Yes, darling, what do you wonder?” she said. Dennis drew a long breath. “I wonder what made Father so beastly to me when I came home this time,” he said. “I can’t think of anything that I had done. I didn’t mean to speak of it, but ... but had I done anything, Mother?” “No, darling,” she said gently. “Then it’s not my fault, anyhow,” he said. “That’s something. Oh Lord, I have thought about it so much. So if it’s not me, it’s something that has just got hold of Father.... I wish it would let go. He came up to my room one night, you know, and was just as he used to be. I believe.... I believe he’s fond of me all the time, really. What am I to do?” She wondered how near the truth he had come. The words, “something has got hold of Father.... I wish it would let go,” were extraordinarily apt. But she could not tell him that his father loved hate, and hated love, and that in her belief love was beginning to assert itself against that black dominion. To tell him that, to speak of the legend and of the choice which Colin had renewed for himself, might spoil the instinctive simplicity with which Dennis faced it all. She could not tell him that his father had tried to corrupt him, and, failing there, was trying to kill his love. The truth, baldly stated, might easily produce in him, if he understood it, just that atmosphere of horror in which love gasped for breath. “Dennis darling,” she said. “You can help your father in a way that nobody else can.” “How?” said Dennis quickly. “And what’s it all about?” “It doesn’t matter what it’s all about,” she said. “But you can help him by doing just what you are doing. Go on loving him, dear. Never let yourself cease loving him.” “As if I could help doing that!” said Dennis. He was busy next morning. He scribbled a long letter to his father, and copied it out with extreme care. No one could possibly say it was illegible.... CHAPTER VI