“My dear boy! My dear boy!”
She put her lips to his forehead, and stroked his hand.
James, too, had turned full towards his son; his face looked older.
“Left you?” he said. “What d’you mean—left you? You never told me she was going to leave you.”
Soames answered surlily: “How could I tell? What’s to be done?”
James began walking up and down; he looked strange and stork-like without a coat. “What’s to be done!” he muttered. “How should I know what’s to be done? What’s the good of asking me? Nobody tells me anything, and then they come and ask me what’s to be done; and I should like to know how I’m to tell them! Here’s your mother, there she stands; she doesn’t say anything. What I should say you’ve got to do is to follow her..”
Soames smiled; his peculiar, supercilious smile had never before looked pitiable.
“I don’t know where she’s gone,” he said.
“Don’t know where she’s gone!” said James. “How d’you mean, don’t know where she’s gone? Where d’you suppose she’s gone? She’s gone after that young Bosinney, that’s where she’s gone. I knew how it would be.”
Soames, in the long silence that followed, felt his mother pressing his hand. And all that passed seemed to pass as though his own power of thinking or doing had gone to sleep.