“Your book—you can go back to it and finish it.”
“I have burnt it.”
“Dad!”
“I burned it. I had to. It was a temptation to me, and until I lifted it from the grate and the flakes crumbled in my hands the surrender was not complete.”
Taffy felt a sudden gush of pity. And as he pitied suddenly he understood his father.
“It had to be complete?”
“Either the book or the surrender. My boy”—and in his voice there echoed the aspiration and the despair of the true scholar, who abhors imperfection and incompleteness in a world where nothing is either perfect or complete; “it is different with you. I borrowed you, so to say, for the time. Without you I must have failed; but this was never your work. For myself, I have learnt my lessons; but, please God, you shall be my Solomon and be granted a temple to build.”
Taffy had lost his shyness now. He laid a hand on his father’s sleeve.
“We will go on then.”
“Yes, we will go on.”