Before him on the table stood a photograph of Diana Deacon, also
eighteen. He hated her with passion. At school she mocked him, aped
him, whispered about him, tortured him. For two years he had hated her.
Nights he fell asleep planning to build a great house and engage her as
its servant.
Yet, as he waited, he could not keep his eyes from this photograph. It
was Di at her curliest, at her fluffiest, Di conscious of her bracelet,
Di smiling. Bobby gazed, his basic aversion to her hard-pressed by a
most reluctant pleasure. He hoped that he would not see her, and he
listened for her voice.
Mr. Deacon descended upon him with an air carried from his supper hour,
bland, dispensing. Well! Let us have it. "What did you wish to see me
about?"--with a use of the past tense as connoting something of
indirection and hence of delicacy--a nicety customary, yet unconscious.
Bobby had arrived in his best clothes and with an air of such formality
that Mr. Deacon had instinctively suspected him of wanting to join the
church, and, to treat the time with due solemnity, had put him in the
parlour until he could attend at leisure.
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