Though Jenny liked what she called "a pretty tune," she knew nothing
whatever of music, understood less. And yet, almost from that first
moment, she understood Ben Cohen, realising him as lover and child:
understood him better, maybe, then than she did later on: losing her
sureness for a while, shaken and bewildered; everything blurred by her
own immensity of love, longing; of fearing that she did not
understand--feeling out of it.
But that was not for sometime to come: in the meanwhile she was like a
dear little bantam hen with one chick; while Ben himself was content to
shelter under her wing, until it grew upon him that, loving her as he
did, loving his mother--realising what it meant to be a mother, in
thinking of jenny herself with a child--his child--in her arms--it was
"up to" him to prove himself for their sakes, to make them proud of him
and his music, without the faintest idea of how proud they were
already, lift the whole weight of care from their shoulders.
The worst of it was, he told them nothing whatever about it. The better
sort of men are given to these crablike ways of appearing to move away
from what they intend to move towards.
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