With
Maggie, with his father, with his sister, with his own life the
decision had got to be taken, and it was with an abrupt
determination that he would end, at all costs, the fears and
uncertainties of these last weeks that he pushed back the hall-door
and entered. He noticed at once strange garments hanging on the rack
and a bright purple umbrella which belonged, as he knew, to a
certain Mrs. Alweed, a friend of his mother's and a faithful servant
of the Chapel, stiff and assertive in the umbrella-stand. There was
a tea-party apparently. Well, he could not face that immediately. He
would have to go in afterwards . . . meanwhile . . .
He turned down the passage, pushed back his father's door and
entered. He paused abruptly in the doorway; there, standing in front
of the window facing him, his pale chin in the air, his legs apart,
supercilious and self-confident, stood Thurston. His father's desk
was littered with papers, rustling and blowing a little in the
breeze from the window that was never perfectly closed.
One candle, on the edge of the desk, its flame swaying in the air
was the only light.
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