"It's—incredible," he began. "My little girl—Sonia, you know Sonia? Have you heard about it?"
"I don't know what you're referring to yet," I pointed out.
"Sonia's run away from her husband!" he whispered uncomprehendingly. "She's gone off with another man. They say—they say David's going to divorce her."
He lowered his hands, and the round, child's eyes, harmonising perfectly with the chubby, boyish face, were as full of horror and incredulity as his voice had been. I knew, of course, that Dainton had lost his elder son in the first year of the war and I believe that the younger had been wounded at least twice; this was the first time, however, that he had been flung against the sharp rocks of life, and he was as helplessly and bewilderedly scared and resentful as a child who has fallen among the breakers on a rugged coast.
"You had better tell me all about it," I said.
His stammering, self-interrupted narrative added nothing to the three sentences which he had already spoken. The blow had fallen that day at luncheon. Dainton found himself one of a large party which was for the most part unknown to him. Half-way through the meal he caught the sound of his daughter's name with some comment which would have been grotesque, if it had not been uttered with so much assurance. There followed the silence which drives home to a speaker that he has said something unpardonable and that he alone is unaware what it is. Dainton's neighbours rallied simultaneously and doused him with two conflicting jets of conversation, only to find that he was not listening and that, when they paused, he asked in an amazed whisper whether they had heard what was said.
"I may not have caught it right," he explained hopefully.
But both denied that they had heard the words in question.
When luncheon was over, an unknown woman with a scarlet face came up to him and apologised with tears in her eyes. What he must think.... She wouldn't have done such a thing for the world.... Really it was partly their hostess's fault for not introducing them properly. Honestly, she had no idea....
"I asked her to say it again," Dainton told me dully. "It was the very first I'd heard, the first I'd suspected.... I can't believe it now—not Sonia.... She—she said it was only a rumour, she couldn't vouch for it, but there was a report that David was going to ..."