Raymond looked at the boy curiously.

“Poor little chap, I wish to God I could make you see sense.  You’ve got the substance and are shouting for the shadow, which you can never have.  You talk like a man, so I’ll answer you like a man and advise you not to listen to the evil tongue of those who bear no kindly thought to me, or you either.  What is the sense of all this hate?  Granted wrong things happened, how are you helping to right the wrong?  Where is the sense of this blind enmity against me?  I can’t call back the past, any more than you can call back the tears you have just shed.  Then why waste nervous energy and strength on all this silly hate?”

“Because it makes me better and stronger to hate you.  It makes me a man quicker to hate you.  You say I talk like a man—­that’s because I hate like a man.”

“You talk like a very silly man, and if you grow up into a man hating me, you’ll grow up a bitter, twisted sort of man—­no good to anybody.  A man with a grievance is only a nuisance to his neighbours; and seeing what your grievance is, and that I am ready and willing to do everything in a father’s power to lessen that grievance and retrieve the mistakes of the past—­remembering, too, that everybody knows my good intentions—­you’ll really get none to care for your troubles.  Instead, all sensible people will tell you that they are largely of your own making.”

“The more you talk, the more I hate you,” said the boy.  “If I never heard your voice again and never saw your face again, still I’d always hate you.  I don’t hate anything else in the world but you.  I wouldn’t spare a bit of hate for anything but you.  I won’t be your son now—­never.”

“Well, run away then.  You’ll live to be sorry for feeling and speaking so, Abel.  I won’t trouble you again.  Next time we meet, I hope you will come to me.”

The boy departed and the man considered.  It seemed that harm irreparable was wrought, and a reconciliation, that might have been easy in Abel’s childhood, when he was too young to appreciate their connection, had now become impossible, since he had grown old enough to understand it.  He would not be Raymond’s son.  He declined the filial relationship—­doubtless prompted thereto from his earliest days, first on one admonition, then at another.  The leaven had been mixed with his blood by his mother, in his infant mind by his grandmother, in his soul by fellow men as he grew towards adolescence.

Yet from Sabina herself the poison had almost passed away.  In the light of these new difficulties she grew anxious, and began to realise how fatally Abel’s possession was standing in his own light.  She loved him, but not passionately.  He would soon be sixteen and her point of view changed.  She had listened long to Estelle and began to understand that, whatever dark memories and errors belonged to Raymond Ironsyde’s past, he designed nothing but generous goodness for their son in the future.