“That does rather let you out,” she admitted. “However, on the whole I am disappointed. I am afraid that you are not so bad as people think.”
“People?” he repeated. “Francis Ledsam, for instance—my son-in-law in posse?”
“Francis Ledsam is one of those few rather brilliant persons who have contrived to keep sane without becoming a prig,” she remarked.
“You know why?” he reminded her. “Francis Ledsam has been a tremendous worker. It is work which keeps a man sane. Brilliancy without the capacity for work drives people to the madhouse.”
“Where we are all going, I suppose,” she sighed.
“Not you,” he answered. “You have just enough—I don't know what we moderns call it—soul, shall I say?—to keep you from the muddy ways.”
She rose to her feet and leaned over the rails. Sir Timothy watched her thoughtfully. Her figure, notwithstanding its suggestions of delicate maturity, was still as slim as a young girl's. She was looking across the tree-tops towards an angry bank of clouds—long, pencil-like streaks of black on a purple background. Below, in the street, a taxi passed with grinding of brakes and noisy horn. The rail against which she leaned looked very flimsy. Sir Timothy stretched out his hand and held her arm.
“My nerves are going with my old age,” he apologised. “That support seems too fragile.”
She did not move. The touch of his fingers grew firmer.
“We have entered upon an allegory,” she murmured. “You are preserving me from the depths.”