ard for her to move about her house, much
less move to Missouri. Not in months perhaps did she even go upstairs
to bestow care upon, the closets, the bed, the comforts of her son. As
might be expected, she considered herself the superior person of the
family; and as often happens, she imposed this estimate of herself upon
her husband. The terrifying vanity and self-sufficiency of the
little-minded! Nature must set great store upon this type of human
being, since it is regularly allowed to rule its betters.

But his father! David had been at home two months now, for this was the
last of February, and not once during that long ordeal of daily living
together had his father opened his lips either to reproach or question
him.

Letters had been received from the faculty, from the pastor; of that
David was aware; but any conversation as to these or as to the events
of which they were the sad consummation, his father would not have. The
gulf between them had been wide before; now it was fathomless.

Yet David well foreknew that the hour of reckoning had to come, when
all that was being held back would be uttered. He realized that both
were silently making preparations for that crisis, and that each day
brought it palpably nearer. Sometimes he could even see it threatening
in his father's eye, hear it in his voice. It had reached the verge of
explosion the night previous, with that prediction of coming
bankruptcy, the selling of the farm of his Kentucky ancestors, the
removal to Missouri in his enfeebled health. Not until his return had
David realized how literally his father had begun to build life anew on
the hopes of him. And now feel with him in his disappointment as deeply
as he might, sympathy he could not openly offer, explanation he could
not possibly give. His life-problem was not his father's problem; his
father was simply not in a position to understand. Doubt anything in
the Bible--doubt so-called orthodox Christianity--be expelled from the
church and from college for such a reason--where could his father find
patience or mercy for wilful folly and impiety like that?

Meantime he had gone to work; on the very day after his return he had
gone to work. Two sentences of his father's, on the afternoon of his
coming home, had rung in David's ears loud and ceaselessly ever since:
"WHY HAVE YOU COME BACK HERE?" And "I ALWAYS KNEW THERE WAS NOTHING IN
YOU?" The first assured him of the new footing on which he stood: he