“I like the idea of a present,” Adam went on. “I thank you for the thought—”

“I’ll put it away. I’ll keep it for you,” Cal broke in.

“No. I won’t want it ever. I would have been so happy if you could have given me—well, what your brother has—pride in the thing he’s doing, gladness in his progress. Money, even clean money, doesn’t stack up with that.” His eyes widened a little and he said, “Have I made you angry, son? Don’t be angry. If you want to give me a present—give me a good life. That would be something I could value.”

Cal felt that he was choking. His forehead streamed with perspiration and he tasted salt on his tongue. He stood up suddenly and his chair fell over. He ran from the room, holding his breath.

Adam called after him, “Don’t be angry, son.”

They let him alone. He sat in his room, his elbows on his desk. He thought he would cry but he did not. He tried to let weeping start but tears could not pass the hot iron in his head.

After a time his breathing steadied and he watched his brain go to work slyly, quietly. He fought the quiet hateful brain down and it slipped aside and went about its work. He fought it more weakly, for hate was seeping all through his body, poisoning every nerve. He could feel himself losing control.

Then there came a point where the control and the fear were gone and his brain cried out in an aching triumph. His hand went to a pencil and he drew tight little spirals one after another on his blotting pad. When Lee came in an hour later there were hundreds of spirals, and they had become smaller and smaller. He did not look up.

Lee closed the door gently. “I brought you some coffee,” he said.

“I don’t want it—yes, I do. Why, thank you, Lee. It’s kind of you to think of it.”

Lee said, “Stop it! Stop it, I tell you!”

“Stop what? What do you want me to stop?”

Lee said uneasily, “I told you once when you asked me that it was all in yourself. I told you you could control it—if you wanted.”

“Control what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lee said, “Can’t you hear me? Can’t I get through to you? Cal, don’t you know what I’m saying?”

“I hear you, Lee. What are you saying?”

“He couldn’t help it, Cal. That’s his nature. It was the only way he knew. He didn’t have any choice. But you have. Don’t you hear me? You have a choice.”

The spirals had become so small that the pencil lines ran together and the result was a shiny black dot.

Cal said quietly, “Aren’t you making a fuss about nothing? You must be slipping. You’d think from your tone that I’d killed somebody. Come off it, Lee. Come off it.”

It was silent in the room. After a moment Cal turned from his desk and the room was empty. A cup of coffee on the bureau top sent up a plume of vapor. Cal drank the coffee scalding as it was and went into the living room.