Frightened by his outburst, but supported still by her burning sense of just indignation, Gerda⁠—still a practical housewife, even at the moment she felt like rushing from the house⁠—went off to the stove to move aside from the fire the saucepan in which their eggs were boiling. Wolf, still shaking from head to foot, strode round the table, and, advancing to the dresser-drawer, flung it noisily open. His movement brought Gerda flying to his side. What ensued then was all so violent and instinctive that it hardly seemed to register itself as a real occurrence at all in his agitated brain.⁠ ⁠… Their clock in the parlour had, however, barely ticked two hundred seconds before he found himself standing breathless and shaky on the pavement before Mrs. Herbert’s house-door, the manuscript of Mr. Urquhart’s book clutched tightly in a hand that seemed to be all one single beating wrist-pulse!

“I must see Mother,” a voice seemed to cry out from some long-obliterated bruise in the pit of his stomach⁠—some navel-string nerve of prenatal origin.⁠ ⁠… “I must see Mother!”