After dinner to-night Joan and he went into the drawing-room. Often, after dinner, he vanished into the study "to work"--but to-night he was "tired, very tired--my dear. So much effort in connection with this Pybus business. What'a come to the town I don't know. A year ago the matter would have been simple enough...anything so obvious...." He sat in his old arm-chair, whence for so many years he had delivered his decisive judgments. No decisive judgments tonight! He was really tired, lying back, his eyes closed, his hands twitching ever so slightly on his knees. Joan sat near to him, struggling to overcome her fear. She felt that if only she could grasp that fear, like a nettle, and hold it tightly in her hand it would seem so slight and unimportant. But she could not grasp it. It was compounded of so many things, of the silence and the dulness, of the Precincts and the Cathedral, of whispering trees and steps on the stairs, of her father and something strange that now inhabited him like a new guest in their house, of her loneliness and of her longing for some friend with whom she could talk, of her ache for Johnny and his comforting, loving smile, but most of all, strangely, of her own love for her father, and her desire, her poignant desire, that he should be happy again. She scarcely missed her mother, she did not want her to come back; but she ached and ached to see once again that happy flush return to her father's cheek, that determined ring to his voice, that buoyant confident movement to his walk. To-night she could not be sure whether he slept or no. She watched him, and the whole world seemed to hold its breath. Suddenly an absurd fancy seized her. She fought against it for a time, sitting there, her hands tightly clenched. Then suddenly it overcame her. Some one was listening outside the window; she fancied that she could see him--tall, dark, lean, his face pressed against the pane. She rose very softly and stole across the floor, very gently drew back one of the curtains and looked out. It was dark and she could see nothing-- only the Cathedral like a grey web against a sky black as ink. A lamp, across the Green, threw a splash of orange in the middle distance--no other light. The Cathedral seemed to be very close to the house. She closed the curtain and then heard her father call her. "Joan! Joan! Where are you?" She came back and stood by his chair. "I was only looking out to see what sort of a night it was, father dear," she said. He suddenly smiled. "I had a pleasant little nap then," he said; "my head's better. There. Sit down close to me. Bring your chair nearer. We're all alone here now, you and I. We must make a lot of one another." He had paid so little attention to her hitherto that she suddenly realised now that her loneliness had, during these last weeks, been the hardest thing of all to bear. She drew her chair close to his and he took her hand.