6/23 Edith was reduced to telephoning Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother into a momentary distraction over a counter. Her whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything that separated her from him. She was in a state that could be altered by only the lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but Sheridan, like legions of other parents, intensified her passion and fed it hourly fuel by opposing to it an intolerable force. He swore she should cool, and thus set her on fire. She fought hard, every other evening, with her father, and kept her bed betweentimes to let him see what his violence had done to her. |