Chapter 43

The illusion of that nearness had gone. His father’s voice—tuned to authority through all the years—had that fatal tinge of patronage. Its inflections condescended to youth. It talked down, even in its attempted and shrewd kindness; it betrayed that something behind the man. And Lance’s head was up. He was seeing the sky through the young green of the foliage, his father’s foliage. He was wondering whether there was not something inherent in the reaction of most parents upon most children which rendered real intima…