All this innocent ecstasy of Baby the young man met with silence and austerity and somber eyes.
With Winny's eyes on him he indeed lifted Baby up, disclosing, first, his pathetically bunched and bundled back, and then his face, exquisitely contorted.
And Winny, who had forgotten for a minute, laughed.
"He is funny, isn't he? He smiles just like you do, all up in the corners like."
At that the young man's arms tightened, and he gripped Baby with passion to his breast. He kissed him, looking down at him, passionately, somberly.
Winny saw, and the impulse seized her to efface herself, to vanish.
"I must be going," she said, "or I shall be late for dinner. Can you manage, Ranny? There's a beefsteak pie. I made it yesterday."
As she turned Dossie trotted after her; and as she vanished Dossie cried, inconsolably.
He managed, beautifully, with the beefsteak pie.
His sense of bereavement which still weighed on him was no longer attached in any way to Violet. He could not say precisely what it was attached to. There it was. Only, when he thought of Violet it seemed to him incomprehensible, not to say absurd, that he should feel it.