"Your nerves must be in a bad way," he said. "Why, you're trembling still! Why don't you see Puddifoot?"
"No--no," she answered hurriedly. "It was silly of me----" Making a great effort, she smiled up at him.
"Well, how's everything going?"
"Going?"
"Yes, for the great day. Is everything settled?"
He began to tell her in the old familiar, so boring way, every detail of the events of the last few hours.
"I was just by Sharps' when I remembered that I'd said nothing to Nixon about those extra seats at the back off the nave, so I had to go all the way round----"
Joan came in. His especial need of some one that night, rejected as it had been at once by his wife, turned to his daughter. How pretty she was, he thought, as she came across the room sunlit with the deep evening gold that struck in long paths of light into the darkest shadows and corners.
That moment seemed suddenly the culmination of the advance that they had been making towards one another during the last six months. When she came close to him, he, usually so unobservant, noticed that she, too, was in distress.
She was smiling but she was unhappy, and he suddenly felt that he had been neglecting her and letting her fight her battles alone, and that she needed his love as urgently as he needed hers. He put his arm around her and drew her to him. The movement was so unlike him and so unexpected that she hesitated a little, then happily came closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder. They had both, for a moment, forgotten Mrs. Brandon.