Free Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham

talked to him. I like him. I want you to like him.”
    He came round slowly and faced her, looking into her eyes which were on a level with his own; his expression altered slightly as he looked at her, and then he said deliberately, “I’m afraid I’m not very interested in whether you like him or not.”
    They went down the stairs. Erica had made up her mind that she would not introduce Marc to her father; instead, she would get hold of René and tell him to take Marc away at once on any pretext he liked. But it was not to be changed; the pattern had already been designed and laid out, and none of them could change it.
    At the foot of the stairs René was standing with Marc, waiting for her, and as Erica and her father reached the last step, he said, “Good afternoon, sir. I’d like to introduce a friend of mine, Marc ...”
    Her father said “Oh, hello, René,” cutting him short, then glanced at Marc without pausing and went on.

II
    I t was after midnight when Erica got home, having left the house soon after René and Marc. She had spent three hours on the Red Cross story which would ordinarily have taken her less than an hour to write, because she could not keep her mind on what she was doing. From the office she went to the Guild meeting where she heard very little that was said and afterwards was unable to remember who had been there. The Guild was slow in getting organized and every extra person made a difference. She had promised to go, in any case. The meeting broke up late, long after she had finally accepted the fact that nothing could be done about Marc, even supposing her father could be persuaded to do it. It had been quite obvious from the way Marc had said goodbye to her, immediately after Charles had failed to stop at the foot of the stairs, that he did not expect to see her again.
    There remained the problem of her father and herself.
    He was sitting in his pyjamas and dressing gown with an untouched whisky and soda on the table beside him and from the door of the study Erica said, “Charles, I want to talk to you.”
    Although he had left the study door open so that, as usual, he would hear her come in, and had in fact been waiting for her ever since dinner, not knowing what to do with himself, he said, barely raising his eyes, “It’s rather late, isn’t it?”
    â€œI won’t take long.”
    He knew that what she wanted to talk about was his behaviour towards René’s Jewish friend, and he not only had no intention of being put in a position where he would have to justify an action which, so far as Charles Drake was concerned, did not require justification, he was still irritated by Erica’s rudeness when he had last seen her just before she had left for her office.
    As soon as he was certain that René and whatever-his-namewas had taken their departure, he had returned from the drawing-room to find Erica had gone upstairs. His wife said that she had some work to finish downtown and that after that, she was going to some kind of union meeting. He had hung about in the hall trying to avoid getting into conversation with anyone, keeping his eyes on the landing so that he shouldn’t miss her. It was not that he wanted to say anything in particular, he just wanted to have a look at his daughter to see if everything was all right, and to let her know that so far as he himself was concerned, there were no hard feelings.
    When Erica had finally come running downstairs he could see that she had been crying; he knew that she wouldn’t want to stop in the hall among a lot of people, so he had cut across to the front door, getting there just ahead of her, and had opened it for her.
    â€œHave you had any dinner, Eric?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAre you going to get some somewhere?”
    She said nothing but simply stood with her hands at her sides and her eyes on some point near the floor at his feet, waiting for him to