ather and son sat looking at each other, and there was something
inimical in the eyes of both. Nicky sat thinking: "Of course father's a
brick in all sorts of ways, and there isn't anybody quite like him, but
he doesn't understand. He never was young like me...." Thus Nicky, and
saw no inconsistency with his statement of a minute earlier that his
father had been so much younger than he at the same age. And Ishmael
thought: "He has the only thing that matters in the world.... _And I was
like that once_...." And almost, for a moment, hated him that he should
have the youth which slipped so fast. The moment died, and with it his
bitterness, merged in the pity of youth which welled up in him as he
sat fronting Nicky's superb confidence, his health, his swelling
appetite for life.

"But why Canada?" asked Ishmael at last, temporising in his turn.

"Because I'm sure it's the country of the future; you should hear Uncle
Dan about it!... And of course he knows so many people there, so I
should have introductions and all that. You know you believe in Uncle
Dan!"

"Yes, I believe, as you call it, in your Uncle Dan's sincerity, if only
because he's done so many inconsistent and apparently contradictory
things in his life. But that doesn't make me see any real reason why you
should go to Canada."

Nicky's bright face took on a sulky expression, he swung a foot, and his
jaw stood out as it did when he was angry, thickening his whole aspect.

"Because, if you want to know, I'm not going to be content to spend my
whole life in an obscure farm in Cornwall, as you've done!" he burst
out. "There's the whole world to see and I want to see it. There's--oh,
a thousand and one things to do and feel one could never get down here,
things I want to do and feel. You can't understand."

That was true, and Ishmael knew it. What human being, he reflected,
marooned as each of us is on the island of individuality, can understand
another even when there is no barrier of a generation between, that
barrier which only the element of sexual interest can overleap? There
had been moments when he had wished that his destiny had not tied him
quite so much, but on the whole he had loved that to which he was tied
too dearly to resent it. He could see that Nicky thought his life had
been very wasted; he allowed himself a little smile as he thought of
what Cloom would have been like as a heritage for Nicky if he had not
taken the view of his destiny that he