Bildungsromans; Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
And then into his mind came a hundred other thoughts, clamouring
thoughts, come out of the hidden parts of him. He began to think that
she could lead the way on a road he wanted to travel. He thought of her
wealth and what it would mean to a man filled with his hunger for power.
And through these thoughts shot others. Something in her had taken hold
of him--something that had been also in Janet. He was curious concerning
her curiosity about his beliefs, and wanted to question her concerning
her own beliefs. He could see none of Colonel Tom’s blustering
incompetence in her and thought her filled with truth as a deep spring
is filled with clear water. He believed she would give him something,
something that all his life he had been wanting. An old aching hunger
that had haunted his nights as a boy came back and he thought that at
her hand it might be fed.
“I--I must read a book about socialism,” he said lamely.
Again they stood in silence, she looking at the floor, he past her head
and out at the window. He could not bring himself to speak again of the
proposed talk. He had a boyish dread of having her notice the tremor in
his voice.
Colonel Tom came into the room, bursting with an idea Sam had given him
at the lunch hour and which in working its way into his mind had
become to the colonel’s entirely honest belief an idea of his own. The
interruption brought to Sam an intense feeling of relief and he began
talking of the colonel’s idea as though it had taken him unawares.
Sue, walking to a window, began tying and untying the curtain cord. When
Sam, raising his eyes, looked at her, he caught her eyes watching him
intently and she smiled, continuing to look at him squarely. It was his
eyes that first broke away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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