At the old familiar phrase she laughed, but her eyes filled with tears.
"Richard," she said, "it's utterly, utterly hopeless; they don't mean it, poor dears, but they can't help being there, and I can't help belonging to them or they to me. If I worry Mother, she gets a batch of nervous headaches that would move a stone to compassion. And her cough takes several turns for the worse. But if I worry Father, and make him really angry, the doctor says he'll die of heart disease, and I know perfectly well that he would, he's just that kind of man. What do you suggest, that I should be a parricide?" She smiled ruefully. "I ought to go up to Cambridge next year, if I'm to be any good, and then to the hospitals in London, but can you see what would happen if I were to suggest it, especially the latter part of the programme? I don't think I'd have to carry it out to kill my father, I think he'd die of fury at the mere idea."
"He'll die anyhow quite soon," said Richard quietly. "No man can go on indefinitely with a heart like his."
"That may be," she agreed, "but I can't be a contributory cause. There's one side of me that rages at the injustice of it all and just wants to grab at everything for itself; but there's another side, Richard, that simply can't inflict pain, that can't bear to hurt anything, not even a fly, because it hurts itself so much in doing it. I'm made like that; I can't bear to hurt things, especially things that seem to lean on me."
"I understand," he said. "Most of us have that side somewhere; maybe it's the better side and maybe it's only the weaker."
"Tell me about yourself," said Joan, changing the subject.
"Well, this is my last year at Cambridge, you know, and then the real work begins—Joan, life's perfectly glorious!"
She looked at him with interest; he had not changed much; he was taller and broader and blunter than ever, but the keenness in his grey eyes reminded her still of the bright inquiring look of a young animal.
"Look here," he said impetuously, "I'll send you some medical books; study as well as you can until you come of age, and then—cut loose! Ask Elizabeth to help you, she's clever enough for anything; and anyhow I won't send things that are too difficult at first, I'll just send something simple."
Her eyes brightened. "Oh, will you, Richard?"