them, what did they gain by it, what good did it do them to slander for slander’s sake? And the suspicion lingered; for, if it was not true, what they said about his father and mother, what was it that was true? He felt that there was something in their past, something that had never entirely disappeared, something that still embittered the existence of both of them, something that was perhaps the cause of their irreconcilable discord.
And the boy felt this so deeply, in the seriousness that had come with his new-found knowledge, that once, when he was alone with his father, he climbed on his knees and simply asked him to tell him what it was. He was a child, for he still sat on his father’s knee, and yet he was already a sturdy boy, though short for his years; and, however serious he might be, he still had the soft bloom of his childhood on his cheeks and on his soul. True, his father was beginning to ask:
“Aren’t you too big, my boy, to sit on your father’s knee?”
But he himself did not think that he was too big yet. Seriousness and extreme childishness, manhood and boyhood were mingled in him; and, though he was a little man, he was also still a boy; though he was serious, he still remained a child.
He sat on his father’s knees and asked him, gravely, to tell him what was true, if the slanders which people spoke were not true; for he felt that there was something. And he read in his father’s eyes that he must not ask; and his father answered
