The doctor adjusted the slipping pillows, then turning he whispered carefully to Stephen. ‘Look after your mother. He’s going, I think—it can’t be long now. I’ll wait in the next room. If you need me you’ve only got to call me.’ ‘Thank you,’ she answered, ‘if I need you I’ll call you.’ Then Sir Philip paid even to the uttermost farthing, paid with stupendous physical courage for the sin of his anxious and pitiful heart; and he drove and he goaded his ebbing strength to the making of one great and terrible effort: ‘Anna—it’s Stephen—listen.’ They were holding his hands. ‘It’s—Stephen—our child—she’s, she’s—it’s Stephen—not like—’ His head fell back rather sharply, and then lay very still upon Anna’s bosom. Stephen released the hand she was holding, for Anna had stooped and was kissing his lips, desperately, passionately kissing his lips, as though to breathe back the life into his body. And none might be there to witness that thing, save God—the God of death and affliction, Who is also the God of love. Turning away she stole out of their presence, leaving them alone in the darkening study, leaving them alone with their deathless devotion—hand in hand, the quick and the dead. BOOK TWO CHAPTER 15 1 Sir Philip’s death deprived his child of three things; of companionship of mind born of real understanding, of a stalwart barrier between her and the world, and above all of love—that faithful love that would gladly have suffered all things for her sake, in order to spare her suffering. Stephen, recovering from the merciful numbness of shock and facing her first deep sorrow, stood utterly confounded, as a child will stand who is lost in a crowd, having somehow let go of the hand that has always guided. Thinking of her father, she realized how greatly she had leant on that man of deep kindness, how sure she had felt of his constant protection, how much she had taken that protection for granted. And so together with her constant grieving, with the ache for his presence that never left her, came the knowledge of what real loneliness felt like. She would marvel, remembering how often in his lifetime she had thought herself lonely, when by stretching out a finger she could touch him, when by speaking she could hear his voice, when by raising her eyes she could see him before her. And now also she knew the desolation of small things, the power to give infinite pain that lies hidden in the little inanimate objects that persist, in a book, in a well-worn garment, in a half-finished letter, in a favourite arm-chair.