“Val, and Adrian, and David—they’ve all gone away from him,” said Flora. “Only he knows there is another life, so much more real and enduring than this one, to which he looks. It means everything to him. If David did do—that—then the hope of meeting him again, in eternity, is gone.”
Quentillian felt the force of her low-spoken, anguished statement.
“You are taking it for granted that a suspicion—which after all, rests on very little indeed—is true.”
“You see, if I am to safeguard my father from this thing, I can’t very well afford to wait and do nothing, just because there’s quite a big chance that it isn’t true at all. The chance that it is true, may be infinitesimal—the hundredth chance, if you like—but it’s that which I’ve got to think about, not the other. Optimism doesn’t carry one far enough, in preparing a line of defence.”
“I agree with you.”
“I don’t think that either you or I are optimists, Owen,” said Flora, faintly smiling.
“No.”
“That’s why I want you to help me. Can you make enquiries at any of the headquarter places in London where they might know something?”
“I can try.”
“Thank you very much,” said Flora, as though his unenthusiastic assent had closed the subject.