"If I could implore you, too—"
He shook his head. "It wouldn't do any good. I've come to the point where I've got to see it through. I have all the data you've given me—as well as some other things. If you're not—not my son—" He rose striding to the fireplace, where he stood pensively, his back to the smouldering fire—"if you're not my son, at least we can find out pretty certainly whose son you are."
Tom also rose, so that they stood face to face. "And if you can't find out pretty certainly whose son I am—?"
"I shall be driven to the conclusion that—"
He didn't finish this sentence. Tom didn't press for it. During the silence that followed it occurred to him that if there was a war the question might be shelved. It was what, he thought, he would work for.
The same idea might have come to the older man, for looking up out of his reverie, he said, with no context:
"What do you mean to be?"
"I've always hoped, sir, to go into a bank. It's what I seem best fitted for."
There came into the eyes that same sudden light, like the switching on of electricity, which Tom remembered from their meeting in the water.