Before the Dawn Read Online Free PDF

she return home. Alice thought of his Cambridge house, dusty and full of books, with longing. She had even mentioned it to Katherine, her voice strangely flat.
    Katherine, always so brisk, so calm, had rounded on her fiercely. “You realize, don’t you, that if you do that, you’ve given up. You’ve given up on George.”
    Alice had stared at her mother-in-law in surprise. “But I have given up,” she said.
    And yet she stayed. She wrote her father, she refused to hope, and she let life pass into an amenable drifting.
    As the car stopped in front of the house with a sputter, the cook and gardener rushed out to the portico, their faces a revealing mixture of fondness and fear.
    "Master George!" James, with a certain over - heartiness, came forward to shake George's hand.  "We're glad to have you back, sir, yes, we are."
    "Thank you, James."
    Katherine stood by his elbow, her expression one of determined placidness.  "I've asked Hettie to set tea out in the drawing room.”
    They stood in the entrance hall, the sunlight from the stained glass window above the door catching the dust motes suspended in the air. 
    "I think, Mother, I'd like to rest.  It's been a tiring journey, as you can well imagine."
    "Of course." If Katherine was disappointed, she did not show it. "Shall I have Hettie send a tray up? Perhaps you will join us for dinner.  Six o'clock, as always." She smiled, as if in apology, and Alice thought how strange that was. Katherine went into the drawing room.
    Alice stared at George. There was no smile on his face, no light of shared understanding in his eyes which stared back at her, aggressively blank. She imagined him sweeping her into his arms as he once did. She imagined her wanting it.
    Then she looked away and asked in a diffident voice, “Shall I help you upstairs?"
    "Do you think I’m an invalid?" George asked in a tone of mild curiosity, and Alice could only shrug.
    “I don’t know what you are.”
    His thin lips twisted into a smile. “That’s an honest thing to say.”
    “Do you not want me to be honest?” Alice asked. “I don’t know what you want.”
    “What do you want, Alice?”
    She stared at him before answering. “I want nothing.”
    “Nothing. That’s what I want too, then.” He started upstairs with slow, heavy steps.  "Come up if you want."
    Alice followed him. She was not sure if she wanted to. The painful process of learning to love one another again seemed far too much work, too much effort, and for what? She imagined him kissing her, and shuddered. She did not know who he was. She had learned to forget.
    When he finally arrived in their old bedroom, now tidied to a point of sterility, he sank on the chair by the bed with a gasp.  His face was white, and sweat gleamed on his forehead.
    "Let me take off your boots."
    He stretched his legs out, saying nothing. Alice knelt and began to unlace his boots with stiff fingers.  She felt like a caricature of a loving wife, playing the part by instinct and manners.
    The first boot resisted, and she tugged gently, not wanting to seem indelicate. She glanced up and saw George watching her with that same expression of cold amusement.  She tugged harder, and the boot came off with a jerk, causing her to tumble backwards.
    George made a short, barking sound, and Alice realized it was laughter.  She threw the boot on the floor and looked up at him. "We thought you were dead."
    "I know."
    "They'd sent a telegram. You might be dead, you might be in prison camp. I suppose they wanted us to take our pick."
    “And did you?”
    “What?” Alice reached for the boot she’d thrown; she felt fear. “What do you mean?”
    “Surely one was more comfortable to believe than the other.” He stared out the window. “Maybe I was dead.”
    “Don’t say that.”
    “You don’t know what it was like.” He hunched his shoulders, and Alice almost wanted to touch him.
    “No,” she said.
    “I don’t want to tell you.”
    “No.”
    She