And yet mingled with the old bitterness was a new sweetness, Helen’s sympathy, Helen’s understanding. It had never occurred to him before that children could give something as well as take all—the all he was so thankful to give them. Why, he thought wistfully, Helen might be the companion he had never had. He shook his head. No, that would not be fair to her. No dead-hand business! She must find her companions in her own generation. He must be ready to stand aside and let her pass on when the time came. That new sweetness was offered to him only that he might learn to make another renunciation.
He looked about him to see if there was anything to be done for the house before he went to bed. “Shall I close that window over there?” he thought to himself. “No, the night is warm. It will give us more air.”
He wheeled himself to the closed door of the dining-room, opened it and perceived that the wind was blowing hard from the other direction, for a strong draught instantly sucked past him between the open window back of him and the open window at the head of Stephen’s bed. He felt the gust and saw the long, light curtain curl eddying out towards him over the flicker of Stephen’s bedside candle.
It caught in an instant. It flared up like gun-cotton, all over its surface. It came dropping down ... horribly dropping down towards Stephen’s unconscious, upturned face ... flames on that tender flesh!
Stephen’s father found himself standing by the bed, snatching the curtain to one side, crushing out the flames between his hands. His wheel chair still stood by the open door.
The draught between the two open windows now blew out the candle abruptly. In the darkness the door slammed shut with a loud report.
But the room was not dark to Lester. As actually as he had seen and felt the burst of flame from the curtain, he now felt himself flare up in physical ecstasy to be standing on his own feet, to know that he had taken a dozen steps, to know that he was no longer a half-man, a mutilated wreck from whom normal people averted their eyes in what they called pity but what was really contempt and disgust.
He was like a man who has been shut in a cage too low for him to stand, who has crouched and stooped and bowed his shoulders, and who suddenly is set free to rise to his full stature, to throw his arms up over his head. The relief from oppression was as rending as a pain. It was a thousand times more joyful than any joy he had ever known. His self, his ego, savagely, grimly, harshly beaten down as it had been, sprang up with an exultant yell.