knocking absent-mindedly through the crowd, down to his cabin on the
lower deck.

In his heart, deep down, stirred an indescribable sympathy with something
he divined in these two that was akin to himself, but that as yet he
could not name. On the surface he felt an emotion he knew not whether to
call uneasiness or surprise, but crowding past it, half smothering it,
rose this other more profound emotion. Something enormously winning in
the atmosphere of father and son called to him in the silence: it was
significant, oddly buried; not yet had it emerged enough to be confessed
and labeled. But each had recognized it in the other. Each knew. Each
waited. And it was extraordinarily disturbing.

Before unpacking, he sat for a long time on his berth, thinking....trying
in vain to catch through a thunder of surprising emotions the word that
might bring explanation. That strange impression of giant bulk,
unsupported by actual measurements; that look of startled security
seeking shelter; that other look of being sure, of knowing where to go
and being actually _en route_,--all these, he felt, grew from the same
hidden cause whereof they were symptoms. It was this hidden thing in the
man that had reached out invisibly and fired his own consciousness as
their gaze met in that brief instant. And it had disturbed him so
profoundly because the very same lost thing lay buried in himself. The
man knew, whereas he anticipated merely--as yet. What was it? Why came
there with it both happiness and fear?

The word that kept chasing itself in a circle like a kitten after its own
tail, yet bringing no explanation, was Loneliness--a loneliness that must
be whispered. For it was loneliness on the verge of finding relief. And
if proclaimed too loud, there might come those who would interfere and