“I have got to go down and see Tod,” he said.  “I like that wife of his; but she has no sense of humor.  How much better principles are in theory than in practice!”

Flora repeated softly, as if to herself: 

“I’m glad I have none.”  She was at the window leaning out, and Felix took his place beside her.  The air was full of scent from wet leaves, alive with the song of birds thanking the sky.  Suddenly he felt her arm round his ribs; either it or they—­which, he could not at the moment tell—­seemed extraordinarily soft. . . .

Between Felix and his young daughter, Nedda, there existed the only kind of love, except a mother’s, which has much permanence—­love based on mutual admiration.  Though why Nedda, with her starry innocence, should admire him, Felix could never understand, not realizing that she read his books, and even analyzed them for herself in the diary which she kept religiously, writing it when she ought to have been asleep.  He had therefore no knowledge of the way his written thoughts stimulated the ceaseless questioning that was always going on within her; the thirst to know why this was and that was not.  Why, for instance, her heart ached so some days and felt light and eager other days?  Why, when people wrote and talked of God, they seemed to know what He was, and she never did?  Why people had to suffer; and the world be black to so many millions?  Why one could not love more than one man at a time?  Why—­a thousand things?  Felix’s books supplied no answers to these questions, but they were comforting; for her real need as yet was not for answers, but ever for more questions, as a young bird’s need is for opening its beak without quite knowing what is coming out or going in.  When she and her father walked, or sat, or went to concerts together, their talk was neither particularly intimate nor particularly voluble; they made to each other no great confidences.  Yet each was certain that the other was not bored—­a great thing; and they squeezed each other’s little fingers a good deal—­very warming.  Now with his son Alan, Felix had a continual sensation of having to keep up to a mark and never succeeding—­a feeling, as in his favorite nightmare, of trying to pass an examination for which he had neglected to prepare; of having to preserve, in fact, form proper to the father of Alan Freeland.  With Nedda he had a sense of refreshment; the delight one has on a spring day, watching a clear stream, a bank of flowers, birds flying.  And Nedda with her father—­what feeling had she?  To be with him was like a long stroking with a touch of tickle in it; to read his books, a long tickle with a nice touch of stroking now and then when one was not expecting it.

That night after dinner, when Alan had gone out and Flora into a dream, she snuggled up alongside her father, got hold of his little finger, and whispered: 

“Come into the garden, Dad; I’ll put on goloshes.  It’s an awfully nice moon.”