He connected now, however, this very momentary sensation with other little sensations that he had felt before in Philip’s company. The young man was so damnably full of his experiences, so eager to compare one thing with another, so insistent upon foreign places and changes in England and what we’d all got to do about it. Trenchard did not altogether dislike this activity. That was the devil of it. It would never do to change his life at this time of day....
He stood, large, genial, and rosy, in front of his fire. “Well, young man, what are you descending upon us at this hour for? Why couldn’t you come to lunch?”
“I wanted to speak to you seriously about something. I wanted to see you alone.”
“Well, here I am. Sit down. Have a cigar.” Trenchard saw that Philip was nervous, and he liked him the better for that. “He’s a nice young fellow, nice and clean and healthy—not too cocksure either, although he’s clever.”
Philip, on his part, felt, at this moment, a desperate determination to make all the Trenchard family love him. They must.... They MUST.
His heart was bursting with charity, with fine illusions, with self-deprecation, with Trenchard exultation. He carried the flaming banner of one who loves and knows that he is loved in return.
He looked round upon George Trenchard’s book-cases and thought that there could, surely, be nothing finer than writing critical books about early Nineteenth Century Literature.
“I love Katherine,” he said, sitting on the very edge of his arm-chair. “And she loves me. We want to be married.”
George Trenchard stared at him.
“Well, I’m damned!” he said at last, “you’ve got some cheek!” His first impression was one of a strange illumination around and about Katherine, as though his daughter had been standing before him in the dark and then had suddenly been surrounded with blazing candles. Although he had, as has been said, already considered the possibility of Katherine’s marriage, he had never considered the possibility of her caring for someone outside the family. That struck him, really, as amazing. That made him regard his daughter, for a moment, as someone quite new and strange.