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 manner, but looked down, frowning, at the bare floor, his eyes concealed by his heavy grey eyebrows. "Surely you don't think that?" he said. "Surely you understand that there's a place in life made ready for you in Coulton—that there's honest work for you there, among your friends, among your schoolmates, with a home for you to live in—and your mother. . . . She has not had a happy minute, you know, since you left."

Don fumbled with his hat; this manner of attack unnerved him. He had not expected gentleness.

"I don't understand you," Mr. Gregg continued. "I have never professed to. I had to leave these things to your mother. But I have never been consciously unkind to you. I have tried to do my duty to you. And it seems to me that you have behaved in a way that is cruel to your mother and most undutiful to me. Why is it? Why are you here? What is it you wish to do with your life? Surely, as your parents, we are entitled to some consideration—to some explanation."

He was asking for a confidence which he should never have had to ask for. It was too late. It was too late for him to ask from the young man what he had repelled in the child and never encouraged in the boy. Don struggled with himself to speak, but when he raised his eyes to his father, he saw only the tyrant of his past, now impotent. The figure of oppression had shrunken; he was old and worried, and he had even a provincial appearance in his lawyer's frock-coat and his collar that was out of style. He was pathetic, but he was not lovable.