There was a pause while he thought. And then, as if for the first time, he seemed to espy the boy. He stepped still farther forward and grasped his shoulder with a wiry hand. Of a sudden, he was serious and intense. And he uttered his words as a man speaks an order in a quick emergency.
“Good for you,” he said. “Good for you, to have come away! And now—no weakening! No getting sentimental! Ah—I see it. Don’t start thinking about mother—about how mother’ll carry on. Every man for himself. Mothers keep you for themselves. Give you a penny-worth of love for the privilege of sucking your soul. Keep you, but don’t sustain you. Keep you, but don’t protect you. I know. Tears—that’s their weapon. A coward’s—as you’d know in any one save a mother. You must be sixteen. Am I right?”
“Fifteen—” Quincy was awed into response.
“Good! Now, heart of steel; thin lips curled slightly downward—that’s armor to hold you tight. I went back. I thought that was more heroic, harder, nobler. Well, perhaps it was. Also, it was damn-foolishness!”
He stopped and released Quincy’s shoulder. And again, in a flash, his mood transformed.
“Good-bye, sonny,” he said, once more aloof and without trace of the intensity which had cut sharp his former words. “I guess I’ll go below. The stars may be visible through the mist from the cave’s mouth.” He turned into the path.
“Blue’s certainly her color—Don’t think of family!” he mused aloud, as he went down.
Quincy sat, dazed for a while. And then, quite as if the power to do so had not before been utterly away, he glided rapid and easy into thinking. Consciousness of where he was—that whose myriad colors had obsessed him—now went entirely. He had been whirled in a maelstrom of sensation. Now, he flew along a track of thought. So at least, however wrong, it appeared to Quincy.
For a while longer he sat. And then, he got up and walked.
He had turned in the direction of his house. Already, he was gone a considerable distance ere he learned this. He stopped. He did not change his route. He merely stood stock still, while his future should be born within him. This also, was how it appeared to Quincy.