“I promised mother to get her some sleeping-powders.”
“Sleeping-powders!”
“She's nervous.”
“Bad things, sleeping-powders,” said Nolan. “Get her to take some setting-up exercises by an open window and she'll sleep like a top.”
“Do you mind, if I go, father?”
Clayton saw that it was of no use to urge the boy. Graham wanted to avoid him, wanted to avoid an interview. The early glow of the evening faded. Once again the sense of having lost his son almost overwhelmed him.
“Very well,” he said stiffly. And Graham went out.
However, he did not leave the house. At the door he met Doctor Haverford. And Delight, and Clayton heard the clergyman's big bass booming through the hall.
“—like a lamb to the slaughter!” he was saying. “And I a man of peace!”
When he came into the library he was still holding forth with an affectation of rage.