His daughter was to him a precious toy, on
which he tried jokes, played tricks, and lavished gifts, for the joy of
seeing the prettiness of her reactions to his treatment. It never
occurred to him to think that his toy might be broken; fond as he was,
his feeling for her lacked the apprehensiveness of the deepest love. But
he idolized his son, and in this case neither without fear nor without
understanding. For four years now he had feared for him bitterly: for
his body, for his life. At every waking hour his inner cry had been
even as David's, "Would God I had died for thee, my son, my son!" For at
every moment of those four years it might be that his son was even then
dead. That terror, endured under a cool and almost off-hand demeanor,
was past; but he feared for his son still. Of all who went to the war as
Crusaders, none had the temperament more ardently than Alec. As he went,
so, obviously, he had come back, not disillusioned, nay, with all his
illusions, or delusions, about this wicked world and its possibilities,
about the people who dwell in it and their lamentable limitations,
stronger in his mind than ever.
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