“You have often told me you were sorry lately,” said his father, “and almost before the words were out of your mouth I have had occasion to find fault with you for something else.”
Martin gave a short, mirthless laugh.
“That is quite true,” he said; “I can’t do right, it appears.”
Mr. Challoner paused a moment; Martin had never before come to open words with him like this.
“What do you mean by speaking to me like that?” he asked, in a voice scarcely audible.
There was no answer.
“I have asked you a question, Martin,” he said, his voice rising suddenly.
Martin pushed back his hair with a hopeless gesture.
“What answer do you expect me to give?” he asked, impatiently. “There is no answer to such a question. You get angry with me and you frighten me. I think you do it on purpose. You have frightened me into silence all my life, now you have frightened me at last into answering you. I hate anger; it makes me sick. And you have been angry with me every day since I came home for my holidays.”
He sat down on a chair behind him with a sort of dull, indifferent acquiescence in whatever might happen, his face sullen, frightened, joyless. It seemed as if it could scarcely be the same radiant boy who had played Brahms an hour ago.