laus--that was
what it amounted to. Nicky was more to him as himself than his idea of
him as his son. Jim was everything to him as the future of Cloom, not as
his grandson any more than that of Archelaus. But sonship struck more
nearly than any matter of a generation twice removed, and not so simply
as all that could the thing be harmonised with his groping soul. For he
was still tormented by doubts as to whether all he had lived on and by
must not be valueless since they were conceived on what did not exist,
still feeling lost, without anything definite to hold to, without any
solution of the riddle. He refused to believe that the whole riddle of
life might be without an answer, that there could be no pattern, only a
blind mingling of threads; that was a supposition everything in him,
inborn and learned, failed to tolerate.

This summer had been a ghastly effort for him, who, for all his reserve,
had never been any use at deception; he had felt as though he took about
with him all day a sensation as of a hollow weight--something that bore
him down and yet had no solidity, that was rather the nightmare
heaviness of a dream. Also he was obsessed by the triumphant face of
Archelaus that leered at him, that stared at Nicky and Jim with a deadly
possessiveness in his eyes while they went their unconscious ways, that
said, as plainly as words could have, "I have won ... I have won!..."

Life was not simple even at seventy, when such a mixture of motives and
sensations could hold sway--the old fear of Archelaus crystallised into
a definite writhing under this triumph of his, the aching sense of
personal loss in his son, and, sharpest pang of any, the fear that all
of life lay hollow behind and before.... Ever since Nicky's birth it had
seemed to him that every revelation had come to him through his
fatherhood of Nicky--ecstasies he had otherwise not touched.... Never,
much as he loved his girls, could they have given him hours such as
Nicky had; neither when Georgie had told him of the advent of each, nor
at the time of birth, had there been for him the deep significance of
the night when Phoebe had whispered to him.... There the fact that he
could only feel a thing at its height for the first time had stepped in,
preventing ever again a renewal of such ecstasy.

And what was ecstasy worth if based on a lie? Back to the old question
he came, turning it over and over, aware of it in the back of his mind
even when he was thru