ome day grow
out of his badness. It made me feel suddenly older and wiser than this
overgrown child who was still crying for the moon. And with that
feeling came a wave of tolerance, followed by a smaller wave of faith,
of faith that everything might yet come out right, if only I could
learn to be patient, as mothers are patient with children.

"And I, on my part, Dinky-Dunk, want to see you get the very best out
of life," I found myself saying to him. My intentions were good, but I
suppose I made my speech in a very superior and school-teachery sort
of way.

"I guess I've got about all that's coming to me," he retorted, with
the note of bitterness still in his voice.

And again I had the feeling of sitting mother-wise and mother-patient
beside an unruly small boy.

"There's much more, Dinky-Dunk, if you only ask for it," I said as
gently as I was able.

He turned, at that, and studied me in the failing light, studied me
with a sharp look of interrogation on his face. I had the feeling, as
he did so, of something epochal in the air, as though the drama of
life were narrowing up to its climactic last moment. Yet I felt
helpless to direct the course of that drama. I nursed the impression
that we stood at the parting of the ways, that we stood hesitating at
the fork of two long and lonely trails which struck off across an
illimitable world, farther and farther apart. I vaguely regretted that
we were already in the streets of Buckhorn, for I was half hoping that
Duncan would tell me to stop the car. Then I vaguely regretted that I
was busy driving that car, as otherwise I might have been free to get
my arms about that granitic Dour Man of mine and strangle him into
submitting to that momentary mood of softness which seems to come less
and less to the male as he grows older.

But Duncan merely laughed, a bit uneasily, and just as suddenly grew
silent again. I had a sense of asbestos curtains coming down between
us, coming down before the climax was reached or the drama was ended.
I couldn't help wondering, as we drove into the cindered station-yard
where the lights were already twinkling, if Dinky-Dunk, like myself,
sat waiting for something which failed to manifest itself, if he too
had held back before the promise of some decisive word which I was
without the power to utter. For we were only half-warm, the two of us,
toying with the ghosts of the dead past and childishly afraid of the
future. We were Laodiceans, ne