“... all unexpected,” Anthony muttered; “I must think about it, see some one. I'll--I'll talk to you to-morrow. That's it,” he enunciated more hopefully, “to-morrow--”
“Entirely unnecessary,” his father interrupted, “nothing to be gained by delay or further talk. The thing's arranged.”
“I think I won't go,” Anthony told him slowly. The other picked up the paper, smoothing out the creases. “Very well,” he replied; “I dare say your mother will do something for you.--Women are the natural source of supplies for the sort of person you seem at the point of becoming.” A barrier of paper, covered with print in regular columns, shut one from the other.
Anthony burned under a whelming sense of injustice. He decided that he would leave the room, his father, forever; but, somehow, he remained motionless in his chair, casting about in his thoughts for words with which to combat the elder's scorn. He thought of Eliza; she smiled at him with appealing loveliness; he felt her letter in his pocket, remembered her boundless generosity. He couldn't leave her! The band in the square below was playing a familiar operatic lament, and the refrain beat on his consciousness in waves of despairing and poignant longing. A sea of misery swept over him in which he struggled like a spent swimmer--Eliza was the far, silver shore toward which he fought. It wasn't fair--a sob almost mastered him--to ask him to go away now, when he had but found her.
“It's not Siberia,” he heard his father say, “nor a life sentence; if this--this 'girl' is serious, you will be closer working for her in California than idle in Ellerton.”
“I don't want to go away from her,” he whispered; “the world's such a hell of a big, empty place... things happen.” He dashed some bright tears from his eyes, and, turning his back on the other, gazed through the window at the tops of the maple trees--a black tracery of foliage against the lights below.
“Two or three years should set you on your feet, give you an opportunity to return.” Eternity could scarcely have seemed more appalling than the term casually indicated by his father, it was unthinkable! A club member entered, fingering the racked journals on the long table, exchanging trivial comments with the older Ball. It seemed incredible to Anthony, in the face of the cataclysm which threatened him, that the world should continue to revolve callously about such topics. It was an affront to the gravity, the dignity, of his suffering. He swiftly left the room.