“What happens to men sometimes,” his Father wants to tell Charlie, “is that one day all at once they’ll understand how much they love their children, as absolutely as a child gives away its own love, and the terrible terms that come with that,— and it proves too much to bear, and they’ll not want it, any of it, and back away in fear. And that’s how these miserable situations arise,— in particular between fathers and sons. The Father too afraid, the Child too innocent. Yet if he could but survive the first onrush of fear, and be bless’d with enough Time to think, he might find a way
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