It was he to whom the utter faith of her impressionable childhood had been given, he who, thinking it love, had again and again deceived her.
It was out of the hard, smiling revolt behind which Kenneth entrenched himself more and more securely and triumphantly against their father, that Lily's softening came at last.
He had failed his children, but had they not failed him? Vonnie, who had died, was the child that had hurt and perplexed Philip Stellenthorpe least; the child that he had loved least. When Lily knew that she might herself be about to have a child, the last resentment against her father was slowly eliminated from her heart.
A strange certainty possessed her that this time the blossom would come to maturity.
Of later years, she had hoped never to have a child, asking herself:
"Why should I want to bring a child into the world, for it to suffer as I suffer?"
Slowly Time had transmuted that cry into a dawning hope that because she had suffered, her child might suffer less.
The little, normal, everyday things of life slipped past, and bore away with them the sense of crisis from Lily and Nicholas.
It was all but incredible that there had ever been a crisis.
The figures that for a little while had seemed to be only shades, peopling a dream world, became real once more.