She liked to be exact, even in despair....
And then in her memory he was struck again, and stood stiff and still. She wanted to kneel to him, imagined herself kneeling....
And so on, quite inconclusively, round and round through the interminable night hours.
§ 3
The young man in the village was, if possible, more perplexed, round-eyed and generally inconclusive than anyone else in this series of nocturnal disturbances. He spent long intervals sitting on his window-sill regarding a world that was scented with nightstock, and seemed to be woven of moonshine and gossamer. Being an inexpert and infrequent soliloquist, his only audible comment on his difficulties was the repetition in varying intonations of his fervent, unalterable conviction that he was damned. But behind this simple verbal mask was a great fury of mental activity.
He had something of Marjorie's amazement at the position of affairs.
He had never properly realized that it was possible for any one to regard Marjorie as a daughter, to order her about and resent the research for her society as criminal. It was a new light in his world. Some day he was to learn the meaning of fatherhood, but in these night watches he regarded it as a hideous survival of mediæval darknesses.
"Of course," he said, entirely ignoring the actual quality of their conversation, "she had to explain about the Magnet affair. Can't one—converse?"
He reflected through great intervals.
"I will see her! Why on earth shouldn't I see her?"