blackness all about him. Whatever had been his father's shortcomings,
they had always clung together--and now they were separated by words
which had cut like a knife. It was useless to tell himself that his
father was not responsible. Out of the heart the mouth had spoken.

And there were other people who felt as his father did--there had been
Drusilla's questions, the questions of others--there had been, too,
averted faces. He saw the little figure in the cloak of heavenly blue
as she had been the other night,--in her gray furs as she had been this
morning--; would her face, too, be turned from him?

Words formed themselves in his mind. He yearned to toss back at his
father the taunt that was on his lips. To fling it over the parapet,
to shout it to the world--!

He had never before felt the care of his father a sacrifice. There had
been humiliating moments, hard moments, but always he had been
sustained by a sense of the rightness of the thing that he was doing
and of its necessity.

Then, out of the darkness, came a shivering old voice, "Derry, are you
there?"

"Yes, Dad."

"Come down--and help me--"

The General, alone in the darkness, had suffered a reaction. He felt
chilled and depressed. He wanted warmth and light.