"Do you mean to say that—having the choice between—that—and me—you choose—that?"
"I don't choose. I can't do anything else. It isn't what you think that rules your life; it's what you love. I'm one of the people to whom love means more than anything else. I daresay it's a weakness—especially in a man—but that's the way it is."
"If your first stipulation is love...."
"Wouldn't it be yours, Onora?"
"I'd try to be reasonable—when so many concessions have been made."
"Yes," Tom hastened to say, "but that's just my point. I'm not asking for concessions. The minute they must be made—well, I'm not there. I couldn't come into your family—on concessions."
Whitelaw spoke up again. "I don't blame you."
Tom tried to make his position clearer. "It's a little like this. A long time ago I was coming along by the Hudson in the train. I was on my way to New York with the man who had adopted me, after I'd been a State ward. There was a steamer on the river, and I watched her—coming from I didn't know where—going to I didn't know where. And it came to me then that she was something like myself. I didn't know what port I'd sailed from; nor what port I was making for. But now that I'm twenty-three—if that's my age—I see this: that once in so often I touched at some happy isle, where the people took me in and were good to me. It was what carried me along."
The mother broke in, reproachfully. "Happy isles—full of convicts and murderers!"
"Yes; but they were happy. The convicts and murderers were kind. A homeless boy doesn't question the moral righteousness of the people who give him food and shelter and clothes, and, what's more, all their best affection. What it comes to is this, that having lived in those happy isles—awhile in one, awhile in another—I don't want to go ashore at an unhappy one, even though I was born there."