"You said some astonishing things in the prison paper," his father ventured. The whole thing seemed so gravely admirable to him—Jeff and the prison as the public knew them—that he wished Jeff himself could get comfort out of it.
"Some few things I believe I settled, so far as I understand them." Jeff was frowning at the table where his hand beat an impatient measure. "I saw things in the large. I saw how the nations—all of 'em, in living under present conditions—could go to hell quickest. That's what they're bent on doing. And I saw how they could call a halt if they would. But how to start in on my own life, I don't know. You'd think I'd had time enough to face the thing and lick it into shape. I haven't. I don't know any more what to do than if I'd been born yesterday—on a new planet—and not such an easy one."
While the colonel had bewailed his own limitations a querulous discontent had ivoried his face. Now it had cleared and left the face sedate and firm in a gravity fitted to its nobility of line.
"Jeff," he said. He leaned over the table and touched Jeffrey's hand.
Jeff looked up.
"What is it?" he asked.
"The reason you're not prepared to go on is because you don't care. You don't care a hang about yourself."
Jeffrey debated a moment. It was true. His troublesome self did not seem to him of any least account.
"Well," said he, "let's go to bed."
But they shook hands before they parted, and the colonel did not put his pipe away in the drawer. He left it on the mantel, conveniently at hand.