"It's got to come soon," he said, "or the boy'll go mad."
At last it came.
One day about tea-time they were sitting in Peter's upstairs study. It had
been a day of showers and now the curtains were not drawn and a green-grey
dusk glimmered beyond the windows.
Peter was writing letters, and as Bobby watched him he seemed to him like
some automaton, something wound into life by some clever inventor. The hand
moved across the paper--the dead eyes encountered nothing in their gaze,
the shoulders were the loosely drooping shoulders of an old man.
"Can you see, Peter?"
"Yes, thanks. Switch on the light if you like."
Bobby got up and moved to the door. The dusk behind Peter's face flung it
into sharp white outline.
Another shower! The rain at first in single drops, then more swiftly, fell
with gentle, pattering fingers up and down the window. It was the only
sound, except the scraping of Peter's pen. The pen stopped. Peter raised
his head, listening.
Bobby switched on the light and as he did so Peter in a strangled
breathless mutter whispered--
"The rain! The rain! It was like that that night. Stephen! Stephen!"
His head fell on to his hands and he burst into a storm of tears.
II
And now Peter was out to be hurt, hurt more horribly than he could have
ever believed possible. It was like walking--as they did in the days of the
Ordeal--on red-hot iron, every step an agony.
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