"What will you do, then?" asked Dewes.
She walked a little further on before she answered.
"I shall do nothing. If, when the time comes, Dick feels that work upon that road is his heritage, if he wants to follow in his father's steps, I shall say not a single word to dissuade him."
Dewes stared at her. This half-hour of conversation had made real to him at all events the great strength of her hostility. Yet she would put the hostility aside and say not a word.
"That's more than I could do," he said, "if I felt as you do. By
George it is!"
Sybil smiled at him with friendliness.
"It's not bravery. Do you remember the unfinished letter which you brought home to me from Harry? There were three sentences in that which I cannot pretend to have forgotten," and she repeated the sentences:
"'Whether he will come out here, it is too early to think about. But the road will not be finished—and I wonder. If he wants to, let him.' It is quite clear—isn't it?—that Harry wanted him to take up the work. You can read that in the words. I can imagine him speaking them and hear the tone he would use. Besides—I have still a greater fear than the one of which you know. I don't want Dick, when he grows up, ever to think that I have been cowardly, and, because I was cowardly, disloyal to his father."
"Yes, I see," said Colonel Dewes.
And this time he really did understand.