"_No_! You are _not_ sorry!" retorted Grismer tartly. "You rejoice secretly in your defiance of your parents! You have been demoralized by the license permitted you by absence from home. You live irresponsibly; you fling away your money on theatres! You yourself admit that you have learned to dance. Nothing that your pastor has taught you, nothing that our church holds sacred seems capable of restraining you from wickedness. That is the truth, Oswald. And your mother and I despair of your future, here and——" he lifted his eyes solemnly—"above." There was an awkward silence. Finally Oswald said with sullen frankness: "You see I’m a man, now, and I’ve got to do my own thinking. Things I used to believe seem tommyrot to me now——" "Oswald!" sighed his mother. "I’m sorry to pain you, Mother, but they do! And about everything you object to I find agreeable. I’m not very bad, Mother. But this sort of talk inclines me to raise the devil. What’s the harm in going to a show? In dancing? In smoking a cigar? For heaven’s sake, let a fellow alone. The line of talk the governor hands me makes a cynic of a man who’s got any brains." There was another silence; then Oswald continued: "And, while we are trying to be frank with each other this pleasant Sunday morning, what about my career? Let’s settle it now!" "I’m opposed to any such frivolous profession!" snapped Grismer angrily. "That’s your answer. And that settles it." "You mean that you still oppose my studying sculpture?" "Emphatically." "Why?" demanded the youth, rather white, but smiling. "Because it is no business career for a Christian!" retorted his father, furious. "It is a loose, irregular, eccentric profession, beset with pitfalls and temptations. It leads to immorality and unbelief—m-m-m’yes, to hell itself! And that is why I oppose it!" Oswald shrugged: "I’m sorry you feel that way but I can’t help it, of course." "Do you mean," inquired his mother, "that you intend to disregard our solemn wishes?" "I don’t know," said the young fellow, "I really don’t know, Mother. I can’t seem to breathe and expand at home. You’ve never made things very cheerful for me." "Oswald! You are utterly heartless!" "I’ve been fed up on the governor’s kind of religion, on narrow views and gloom; and that’s no good for a modern boy. It’s a wonder I have any heart at all, and sometimes I think it’s dried up——" "That will do!" shouted Grismer, losing all self-control. "If your home, your parents, and your Creator can not make a Christian of you, there is nothing to hope from you! ... I’ll hear no more from you. Go and get ready for church!" "I sha’n’t go," said the young fellow calmly. When he went back to Cambridge at the end of the week, it was with the desire never to see his home again, and with a vague and burning intention to get even, somehow, by breaking every law of the imbecile religion on which he had been "fed up." *CHAPTER VIII*