His slightly bulging eyes were damp as he stared past Cal, and the boy asked, “What’s the matter, Mr. Hamilton? Don’t you feel well?”

Will had sensed his family but he had not understood them. And they had accepted him without knowing there was anything to understand. And now this boy came along. Will understood him, felt him, sensed him, recognized him. This was the son he should have had, or the brother, or the father. And the cold wind of memory changed to a warmth toward Cal which gripped him in the stomach and pushed up against his lungs.

He forced his attention to the glass office. Cal was sitting back in his chair, waiting.

Will did not know how long his silence had lasted. “I was thinking,” he said lamely. He made his voice stern. “You asked me something. I’m a businessman. I don’t give things away. I sell them.”

“Yes, sir.” Cal was watchful but he felt that Will Hamilton liked him.

Will said, “I want to know something and I want the truth. Will you tell me the truth?”

“I don’t know,” said Cal.

“I like that. How do you know until you know the question? I like that. That’s smart—and honest. Listen—you have a brother. Does your father like him better than you?”

“Everybody does,” said Cal calmly. “Everybody loves Aron.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, sir. At least—yes, I do.”

“What’s the ‘at least’?”

“Sometimes I think he’s stupid but I like him.”

“Now how about your father?”

“I love him,” said Cal.

“And he loves your brother better.”

“I don’t know.”

“Now, you say you want to give back the money your father lost. Why?”

Ordinarily Cal’s eyes were squinted and cautious, but now they were so wide that they seemed to look around and through Will. Cal was as close to his own soul as it is possible to get.

“My father is good,” he said. “I want to make it up to him because I am not good.”

“If you do that, wouldn’t you be good?”

“No,” said Cal. “I think bad.”

Will had never met anyone who spoke so nakedly. He was near to embarrassment because of the nakedness, and he knew how safe Cal was in his stripped honesty. “Only one more,” he said, “and I won’t mind if you don’t answer it. I don’t think I would answer it. Here it is. Suppose you should get this money and give it to your father—would it cross your mind that you were trying to buy his love?”

“Yes, sir. It would. And it would be true.”

“That’s all I want to ask. That’s all.” Will leaned forward and put his hands against his sweating, pulsing forehead. He could not remember when he had been so shaken. And in Cal there was a cautious leap of triumph. He knew he had won and he closed his face against showing it.

Will raised his head and took off his glasses and wiped the moisture from them. “Let’s go outside,” he said. “Let’s go for a drive.”