Well, it was done now, and Michael felt that there were no new vexations
to be sprung on his father. It was bound to happen, he supposed, sooner
or later, and he was not sorry that it had happened sooner than he
expected or intended. Sylvia so held sway in him that he could not help
acknowledging her. His announcement had broken from him irresistibly,
in spite of his mother's whispered word to him last night, "This is our
secret." It could not be secret when his father spoke like that. . . .
And then, with a flare of illumination he perceived how intensely his
father disliked him. Nothing but sheer basic antipathy could have been
responsible for that miserable retort, "Am I to bind up your broken
heart?" Anger, no doubt, was the immediate cause, but so utterly
ungenerous a rejoinder to Michael's announcement could not have been
conceived, except in a heart that thoroughly and rootedly disliked him.
That he was a continual monument of disappointment to his father he knew
well, but never before had it been quite plainly shown him how essential
an object of dislike he was. And the grounds of the dislike were now
equally plain--his father disliked him exactly because he was his
father.
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