In the day-time he never thought of his father at all.  But in his sleep one nightmare returned repeatedly.  It never varied; it was definite and horrible.  In it his father, grown to demonic proportions, towered over Christine’s huddled body, his eyes terrible, his fists clenched and raised to strike.  Then in that moment, at the very height of his awful fear and helpless hatred, the wonderful truth burst upon Robert, and he danced gleefully, full of cruel triumph, about the black, suddenly impotent figure, shouting: 

“You can’t—­you’re dead—­you’re dead—­you can’t——­”

And then he would wake up with a hideous start, sweating, his eyes hot with unshed tears, and Christine’s hand would come to him out of the darkness and clasp his in reassuring firmness.

There was another dream.  Or, rather, it was half a dream and half one of these stories that he told himself just before he fell asleep.  It came to him at dusk when he stood at the gate and waited for Christine to come home.  In the long day of silent games he had lost touch, little by little, with reality.  Hunger had made him faint and drowsy.  Things changed, became unfamiliar, fantastic.  Between the stunted trees he could see the afterglow of the sunset like the reflection of a blazing city.  The road then was full of silence and shadow.  The drab outlines grew faint and the mean houses were merged into the vaster shapes of night.  Robert waited, motionless, breathless.  He was sure that something was coming to him down the path of fading light.  He did not know what it was.  Once, indeed, it had been Francey, with her queer dancing step, her hair flying about her head like a flock of little red-brown birds.  She had hovered before him, on tiptoe, as though the next gust of wind would blow her on her way down the street, and looked at him.  They had not spoken, but he had seen in her eyes how sorry she was that she had not understood.  And a warm content had flowed over him.  All the sore, aching places were healed and comforted.

But that had been only once.  And then he wasn’t sure that he hadn’t made it up.  At all other times the thing was outside himself too strange to have been imagined.  It shook him from head to foot with dread and longing.  He wanted to run to meet it, to plunge into it, reckless and shouting, as into a warm, dancing, summer sea.  And yet it menaced him.  It was of fire and colour, of the rumble and thud of armies, of laughter and singing and distant broken music.  It was all just round the comer.  If he hurried he would see it, lose himself in it, march to the tune he could never quite catch.  But he was afraid, and whilst he tried to make up his mind the light faded.  The sounds died.  After all, it was only Christine, trudging wearily through the dusk.

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