Mrs. Gower whirled on Norman.
"I wash my hands of you completely," she said imperiously. "I am ashamed of you."
"I'd rather you'd be ashamed of me," Norman retorted, "than that I should be ashamed of myself."
"And you, sir,"—he faced his father, speaking in a tone of formal respect which did not conceal a palpable undercurrent of defiance—"you also, I suppose, wash your hands of me?"
Gower looked at him for a second. His face was a mask, devoid of expression.
"You're a man grown," he said. "Your mother has expressed herself as she might be expected to. I say nothing."
Norman walked to the door.
"I don't care a deuce of a lot what you say or what you don't say, nor even what you think," he flung at them angrily, with his hand on the knob. "I have my own row to hoe. I'm going to hoe it my own style. And that's all there is to it. If you can't even wish me luck, why, you can go to the devil!"
"Norman!" His mother lifted her voice in protesting horror. Gower himself only smiled, a bit cynically. And Betty looked at the door which closed upon her brother with a wistful sort of astonishment.
Gower first found occasion for speech.