Probably he would have gone to Lucy at once, but the telephone rang.
He answered it, got his hat and bag and went out to the car. Years
with David had made automatic the subordination of self to the
demands of the practice.

At half past six Lucy heard him come in and go into his office.
When he did not immediately reappear and take his flying run up
the stairs to David's room, she stood outside the office door and
listened. She had a premonition of something wrong, something of
the truth, perhaps. Anyhow, she tapped at the door and opened it,
to find him sitting very quietly at his desk with his head in his
hands.

"Dick!" she exclaimed. "Is anything wrong?"

"I have a headache," he said. He looked at his watch and got up.
"I'll take a look at David, and then we'll have dinner. I didn't
know it was so late."

But when she had gone out he did not immediately move. He had been
going over again, painfully and carefully, the things that puzzled
him, that he had accepted before without dispute. David and Lucy's
reluctance to discuss his father; the long days in the cabin, with
David helping him to reconstruct his past; the spring, and that slow
progress which now he felt, somehow, had been an escape.

He ate very little dinner, and Lucy's sense of dread increased.
When, after the meal, she took refuge in her sitting-room on the
lower floor and picked up her knitting, it was with a conviction
that it was only a temporary reprieve. She did not know from what.