“I couldn’t, without seeing him; I must see him first, Uncle!”

John got up and went over to the window; he, too, had been affected by her face.

“You realize,” he said, “that you risk everything by that.  If he’s given himself up, and they’ve believed him, he’s not the sort to let it fall through.  You cut off your chance if he won’t let you tell.  Better for your father and me to see him first, anyway.”  And Felix heard a mutter that sounded like:  ‘Confound him!’

Nedda rose.  “Can we go at once, then, Uncle?”

With a solemnity that touched Felix, John put a hand on each side of her face, raised it, and kissed her on the forehead.

“All right!” he said.  “Let’s be off!”

A silent trio sought Paddington in a taxi-cab, digesting this desperate climax of an affair that sprang from origins so small.

In Felix, contemplating his daughter’s face, there was profound compassion, but also that family dismay, that perturbation of self-esteem, which public scandal forces on kinsmen, even the most philosophic.  He felt exasperation against Derek, against Kirsteen, almost even against Tod, for having acquiesced passively in the revolutionary bringing-up which had brought on such a disaster.  War against injustice; sympathy with suffering; chivalry!  Yes!  But not quite to the point whence they recoiled on his daughter, his family, himself!  The situation was impossible!  He was fast resolving that, whether or no they saved Derek from this quixotry, the boy should not have Nedda.  And already his eyes found difficulty in meeting hers.

They secured a compartment to themselves and, having settled down in corners, began mechanically unfolding evening journals.  For after all, whatever happens, one must read the papers!  Without that, life would indeed be insupportable!  Felix had bought Mr. Cuthcott’s, but, though he turned and turned the sheets, they seemed to have no sense till these words caught his eyes:  “Convict’s tragic death!  Yesterday afternoon at Worcester, while being conveyed from the assize court back to prison, a man named Tryst, sentenced to three years’ penal servitude for arson, suddenly attacked the warders in charge of him and escaped.  He ran down the street, hotly pursued, and, darting out into the traffic, threw himself under a motor-car going at some speed.  The car struck him on the head, and the unfortunate man was killed on the spot.  No reason whatever can be assigned for this desperate act.  He is known, however, to have suffered from epilepsy, and it is thought an attack may have been coming on him at the time.”