Father and son sat looking at each other, and there was something inimical in the eyes of both.  Nicky sat thinking:  “Of course father’s a brick in all sorts of ways, and there isn’t anybody quite like him, but he doesn’t understand.  He never was young like me....”  Thus Nicky, and saw no inconsistency with his statement of a minute earlier that his father had been so much younger than he at the same age.  And Ishmael thought:  “He has the only thing that matters in the world.... And I was like that once....”  And almost, for a moment, hated him that he should have the youth which slipped so fast.  The moment died, and with it his bitterness, merged in the pity of youth which welled up in him as he sat fronting Nicky’s superb confidence, his health, his swelling appetite for life.

“But why Canada?” asked Ishmael at last, temporising in his turn.

“Because I’m sure it’s the country of the future; you should hear Uncle Dan about it!...  And of course he knows so many people there, so I should have introductions and all that.  You know you believe in Uncle Dan!”

“Yes, I believe, as you call it, in your Uncle Dan’s sincerity, if only because he’s done so many inconsistent and apparently contradictory things in his life.  But that doesn’t make me see any real reason why you should go to Canada.”

Nicky’s bright face took on a sulky expression, he swung a foot, and his jaw stood out as it did when he was angry, thickening his whole aspect.

“Because, if you want to know, I’m not going to be content to spend my whole life in an obscure farm in Cornwall, as you’ve done!” he burst out.  “There’s the whole world to see and I want to see it.  There’s—­oh, a thousand and one things to do and feel one could never get down here, things I want to do and feel.  You can’t understand.”

That was true, and Ishmael knew it.  What human being, he reflected, marooned as each of us is on the island of individuality, can understand another even when there is no barrier of a generation between, that barrier which only the element of sexual interest can overleap?  There had been moments when he had wished that his destiny had not tied him quite so much, but on the whole he had loved that to which he was tied too dearly to resent it.  He could see that Nicky thought his life had been very wasted; he allowed himself a little smile as he thought of what Cloom would have been like as a heritage for Nicky if he had not taken the view of his destiny that he had.  What would Nicky’s own position in life have been?  Probably no better than that of his grandfather, old James Ruan.  Ishmael laughed outright, much to Nicky’s indignation, but when he spoke again his voice was gentler.

“I’ll think it over,” he promised, “and I’ll write to your uncle and ask him what he thinks.  I don’t want to clip your wings, Nicky, Heaven forbid!  I mayn’t always have enjoyed having my own flights so circumscribed, you know.”