His eyes which were blue like hers, only faded, without depth, seemed to
start out of their orbits. He did really look as if he were choking. He
even put his hand to his collar . . . "
* * * * *
"You know," continued Marlow out of the shadow of the bookcase and nearly
invisible in the depths of the arm-chair, "the only time I saw him he had
given me the impression of absolute rigidity, as though he had swallowed
a poker. But it seems that he could collapse. I can hardly picture this
to myself. I understand that he did collapse to a certain extent in his
corner of the cab. The unexpected had crumpled him up. She regarded him
perplexed, pitying, a little disillusioned, and nodded at him gravely:
Yes. Married. What she did not like was to see him smile in a manner
far from encouraging to the devotion of a daughter. There was something
unintentionally savage in it. Old de Barral could not quite command his
muscles, as yet. But he had recovered command of his gentle voice.
"You were just saying that in this wide world there we were, only you and
I, to stick to each other."
She was dimly aware of the scathing intention lurking in these soft low
tones, in these words which appealed to her poignantly. She defended
herself. Never, never for a single moment had she ceased to think of
him. Neither did he cease to think of her, he said, with as much
sinister emphasis as he was capable of.
"But, papa," she cried, "I haven't been shut up like you." She didn't
mind speaking of it because he was innocent. He hadn't been understood.
It was a misfortune of the most cruel kind but no more disgraceful than
an illness, a maiming accident or some other visitation of blind fate. "I
wish I had been too. But I was alone out in the world, the horrid world,
that very world which had used you so badly."
"And you couldn't go about in it without finding somebody to fall in love
with?" he said. A jealous rage affected his brain like the fumes of
wine, rising from some secret depths of his being so long deprived of all
emotions. The hollows at the corners of his lips became more pronounced
in the puffy roundness of his cheeks. Images, visions, obsess with
particular force, men withdrawn from the sights and sounds of active
life. "And I did nothing but think of you!" he exclaimed under his
breath, contemptuously. "Think of you! You haunted me, I tell you."