“Yes, father.” Edwin was thankful to leave it at that; thankful that his father knew just so much, even if he didn’t know any more. It would be terrible to know more than your father, to feel that he was a sort of intellectual inferior to you—a boy of fifteen. He would not talk of these things any more. They walked home in silence. It seemed as if Mr. Ingleby were still worrying about his wife’s tiredness, for when she tried to joke with him at the supper table he was moody and restrained. “I’m not really a bit overdone,” she protested, kissing his forehead. “You’re like a pair of children, the two of you,” he said, and indeed his gray seriousness seemed to isolate him from all the joy of youth that was in them. That night Edwin’s mother sat for a long time on the bed talking to him in a low voice. She would not tell him any more about the mountain farmstead that had once been a castle, even when he begged her to do so. She wanted to talk, she said, about all that he was to do during the term, to make wonderful plans for the holidays, when the days would be longer and they would be able to sit out under the limes on the lawn in the twilight. “I am going to plant evening stock,” she said, “all along the lawn border in between the irises. Besides, I shall be stronger then and we will often take our tea with us to Uffdown.” And at last she said, “Eddie, you bad boy, you must really go to sleep now, darling. You’ve got such a big journey before you to-morrow, and you’re sure to get a headache if you don’t have a good night’s sleep.” She kissed him many times. IV And when she had passed downstairs to the dining-room where her husband sat before the fire in a plush arm-chair, lightly dozing, she kissed him, too. She was feeling queerly flushed and emotional, and somehow the atmosphere of that little room felt stuffy to her after the air of the open spaces. “I’m restless to-night, dear,” she said. “I hate Eddie going back to school. It’s dreadful to be parted from your baby just when he’s beginning to be more and more part of you.” “Come close to me, by the fire, child,” he said. “No . . . I want some music, I think.” She went into the drawing-room and lit the candles on the piano. Sitting there, in the pale light, with a shawl thrown over her muslin tea-gown, she looked very frail and pathetic, against the piano’s ebony. She played the _Sonata Appassionata_ of Beethoven, and the rather tawdry little knick-knacks on the piano danced as if they were made uncomfortable by the rugged passion. The whole room seemed a little bit artificial and threadbare, ministering to her discontent. When the _Sonata_ was finished she still sat at the piano, conscious of her own reflection in its polished panels, and wanting to cry. She could not bear the taunting of that image, and so she snuffed the candles and sat in the dark.