not have. The gulf between them had been wide before; now it was
fathomless.

Yet David well foreknew that the hour of reckoning had to come,
when all that was being held back would be uttered. He realized
that both were silently making preparations for that crisis, and
that each day brought it palpably nearer. Sometimes he could even
see it threatening in his father's eye, hear it in his voice. It
had reached the verge of explosion the night previous, with that
prediction of coming bankruptcy, the selling of the farm of his
Kentucky ancestors, the removal to Missouri in his enfeebled
health. Not until his return had David realized how literally his
father had begun to build life anew on the hopes of him. And now
feel with him in his disappointment as deeply as he might, sympathy
he could not openly offer, explanation he could not possibly give.
His life-problem was not his father's problem; his father was
simply not in a position to understand. Doubt anything in the
Bible--doubt so-called orthodox Christianity--be expelled from the
church and from college for such a reason--where could his father
find patience or mercy for wilful folly and impiety like that?

Meantime he had gone to work; on the very day after his return he
had gone to work. Two sentences of his father's, on the afternoon
of his coming home, had rung in David's ears loud and ceaselessly
ever since: "WHY HAVE YOU COME BACK HERE?" And "I ALWAYS KNEW THERE
WAS NOTHING IN YOU?" The first assured him of the new footing on
which he stood: he was no longer desired under that roof. The
second summed up the life-long estimate which had been formed of
his character before he had gone away.