open-eyed wonder when my mother, coming out of the parlor into the
hallway, called me and said there was someone inside who wanted to see
me. Feeling that I was being made a party to some kind of mystery,
I went in with her, and there I saw a man standing leaning with one
elbow on the mantel, his back partly turned toward the door. As I
entered, he turned and I saw a tall, handsome, well-dressed gentleman
of perhaps thirty-five; he advanced a step toward me with a smile on
his face. I stopped and looked at him with the same feelings with
which I had looked at the derby hat, except that they were greatly
magnified. I looked at him from head to foot, but he was an absolute
blank to me until my eyes rested on his slender, elegant polished
shoes; then it seemed that indistinct and partly obliterated films
of memory began, at first slowly, then rapidly, to unroll, forming a
vague panorama of my childhood days in Georgia.

My mother broke the spell by calling me by name and saying: "This is
your father."

"Father, father," that was the word which had been to me a source of
doubt and perplexity ever since the interview with my mother on the
subject. How often I had wondered about my father, who he was, what
he was like, whether alive or dead, and, above all, why she would not
tell me about him. More than once I had been on the point of recalling
to her the promise she had made me, but I instinctively felt that she
was happier for not telling me and that I was happier for not being
told; yet I had not the slightest idea what the real truth was.
And here he stood before me, just the kind of looking father I had
wishfully pictured him to be; but I made no advance toward him; I
stood there feeling embarrassed and foolish, not knowing what to say
or do. I am not sure but that he felt pretty much the same. My mother