warning. To see about some papers. Some papers. Christopher was to
understand--

Christopher understood. Indeed there was not much to understand. And
yet, when they had gone on, he was bothered by it. Already, so young he
was, so ruthless, and so romantic, he had begun to be a little ashamed
of that fading, matter-of-fact world of Concord Street. And it was with
just that world which he wished to forget, that the man lying ill in the
candle-lit chamber was linked in Christopher's memory. For it was the
same man he had seen in the doorway that morning months ago, with a
brown hat in one hand and a thorn stick in the other.

Even a thing like that may be half put aside, though--for a while. And
by the time Christopher went to his room for the night the thought of
the interloper had retired into the back of his mind, and they were all
Kains there on the Hill, inheritors of romance. He found himself bowing
to his mother with a courtliness he had never known, and an "I wish you
a good night," sounding a century old on his lips. He saw the remote,
patrician figure bow as gravely in return, a petal of colour as hard as
paint on the whiteness of either cheek. He did not see her afterward,
though, when the merciful door was closed.

Before he slept he explored the chamber, touching old objects with
reverent finger-tips. He came on a leather case like an absurdly
overgrown beetle, hidden in a corner, and a violoncello was in it. He
had seen such things before, but he had never touched one, and when he
lifted it from the case he had a moment of feeling very odd at the pit
of his stomach. Sitting in his underthings on the edge of the bed, he
held the wine-coloured creature in the crook of his arm for a long time,
the look in his round eyes, half eagerness, half pain, of one pursuing