“Then why did you save Dennis?”
Colin began to catch a glimpse of the purport of the question. But nothing, he determined, should make him give the answer that he felt was required of him. Besides, such an answer, he told himself, was not true. He had been guilty, at the most, of a momentary weakness.
“I saved him, I tell you,” he said, “because I chose to. He was my only son. Was it not reasonable that I should wish him to live and continue my line?”
He was definitely uneasy now. His uneasiness irritated him into flippancy.
“Perhaps you are a bachelor,” he said, “and so you can’t be expected to understand that. In any case I don’t know what right you have to ask me, and I have no other answer for you.”
Once more there was silence. Then the quiet voice spoke again.
“Why did you save Dennis?” it asked.
The question was beginning to frighten him. He felt as if he was on the rack, and that each time the question came some lever was pulled, some cog clicked, and the ropes round his wrists and ankles were getting more taut. He could just feel the strain of them which would presently increase.
“Why did you save Dennis?” asked the voice again.
This time Colin clenched his teeth. Whatever torture might be in store, he would never answer that. There was no actual pain yet, only the anticipation of it. But surely years had passed since he found his way through the mist into this shed. It could not only have been last evening, as the dusk of this present night began to fall, that he had come here and covered himself up in the straw.