“Of course you can. Try and be a man, Adrian, for your sister’s sake.”
“It’s worse for me than for any of them,” said Adrian ingenuously, “because I’ve got things to be remorseful about, and they haven’t. And now it’s too late!”
“You were here in time,” said Quentillian, abominably conscious, and resentful, of his own triteness.
“And I promised him I’d chuck my job. I think it comforted him.”
“I’m sure it did.”
“It was a sacrifice, in a way, to throw the whole thing up, when I was doing well and keen on it, and all that sort of thing; but I’m thankful now that I did it. Perhaps it made up to—him—for my having been such a hound, often and often.”
It was oddly evident that Adrian was torn between genuine grief and shock and a latent desire to make the most of his own former depravity.
“I daresay you’re thinking that having been through the war and everything, I ought to be used to the sight of death,” he said presently; “but it’s quite different when it’s like this. One got sort of hardened there, and everybody was running the same risk—oneself included. But my father—why, it seems like the end of everything, Owen. I must say, I think I’m a bit young to have my home broken up like this, don’t you?”
“Very young,” repeated Quentillian automatically, and yet not altogether without significance.
“I don’t know what will happen, but of course Lucilla and I have to leave St. Gwenllian. It’s hard on her, too. I thought we ought to keep together, you know, for a bit. It seems more natural. I shall have to look for a fresh job, and I don’t know what Hale will say to my chucking him.”