light left to read by, so that she must take her book to the window and must bend her face closer over the page; but still she read on and on in the dusk. Then suddenly she had got to her feet and was talking aloud—she was talking to her father: ‘You knew! All the time you knew this thing, but because of your pity you wouldn’t tell me. Oh, Father—and there are so many of us—thousands of miserable, unwanted people, who have no right to love, no right to compassion because they’re maimed, hideously maimed and ugly—God’s cruel; He let us get flawed in the making.’ And then, before she knew what she was doing, she had found her father’s old, well-worn Bible. There she stood demanding a sign from heaven—nothing less than a sign from heaven she demanded. The Bible fell open near the beginning. She read: ‘And the Lord set a mark upon Cain. . . .’ Then Stephen hurled the Bible away, and she sank down completely hopeless and beaten, rocking her body backwards and forwards with a kind of abrupt yet methodical rhythm: ‘And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, upon Cain. . . .’ she was rocking now in rhythm to those words, ‘And the Lord set a mark upon Cain—upon Cain—upon Cain. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain. . . .’ That was how Puddle came in and found her, and Puddle said: ‘Where you go, I go, Stephen. All that you’re suffering at this moment I’ve suffered. It was when I was very young like you—but I still remember.’ Stephen looked up with bewildered eyes: ‘Would you go with Cain whom God marked?’ she said slowly, for she had not understood Puddle’s meaning, so she asked her once more: ‘Would you go with Cain?’ Puddle put an arm round Stephen’s bowed shoulders, and she said: ‘You’ve got work to do—come and do it! Why, just because you are what you are, you may actually find that you’ve got an advantage. You may write with a curious double insight—write both men and women from a personal knowledge. Nothing’s completely misplaced or wasted, I’m sure of that—and we’re all part of nature. Some day the world will recognize this, but meanwhile there’s plenty of work that’s waiting. For the sake of all the others who are like you, but less strong and less gifted perhaps, many of them, it’s up to you to have the courage to make good, and I’m here to help you to do it, Stephen.’ BOOK THREE CHAPTER 28 1