"I waited--the day came, and I spoke. You can guess his answer, I
suppose. He had no idea of selling the _Radiator_. It wasn't the
money he cared for--it was the career that tempted him. He was a
born journalist, and his ambition, ever since he could remember, had
been to carry on his father's work, to develop, to surpass it. There
was nothing in the world as interesting as modern journalism. He
couldn't imagine any other kind of life that wouldn't bore him to
death. A newspaper like the _Radiator_ might be made one of the
biggest powers on earth, and he loved power, and meant to have all
he could get. I listened to him in a kind of trance. I couldn't find
a word to say. His father had had scruples--he had none. I seemed to
realize at once that argument would be useless. I don't know that I
even tried to plead with him--he was so bright and hard and
inaccessible! Then I saw that he was, after all, what I had made
him--the creature of my concessions, my connivances, my evasions.
That was the price I had paid for him--I had kept him at that cost!
"Well--I _had_ kept him, at any rate. That was the feeling that
survived. He was my boy, my son, my very own--till some other woman
took him. Meanwhile the old life must go on as it could. I gave up
the struggle. If at that point he was inaccessible, at others he was
close to me. He has always been a perfect son. Our tastes grew
together--we enjoyed the same books, the same pictures, the same
people.
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