Babel

Diē,’ he said again. Then a laugh escaped his throat; hysterical, helpless, because it was so very funny, so apt that the romanization of father contained the same letters for death in English. And Professor Lovell was so clearly, incontrovertibly dead. There was no walking back from this. There could be no more pretending.

it would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Letty, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comfort.

Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.