“You just don’t seem to give a damn!” Dave roared now. “What do you want, anyway!”

“Not a thing, Dad.”

“You ought to be married by now and have two three kids and be in shape to run the business—if necessary. Which,” he added hastily, glancing down at himself and flicking an imaginary speck off his coat sleeve, “it isn’t. But if this doesn’t interest you, as a job, what does? Name it. What would you like to do?”

The handsome head did not turn away from the window toward the older man. He spoke casually, a quiet and detached amusement lurked in his tone. This Dave Husack found maddening.

“I just told you. Not a thing. I know I ought to say I’ve been wanting to write a book, or go into politics, or take up ranching, or paint like all these disturbed ones, or travel, or manufacture something, or go back to school and become a physicist. Everybody’s a physicist. This business is all right, it’s legitimate and successful, but there’s no gamble in it, no margin for error. It’s like a bullfight. No matter how much he paws the ground and bellows he’s a dead bull before he sets foot in the ring. There’s all that fish and timber and metal and stuff in Alaska, but no matter how much Gruening and the rest of them roar it’s all yours. Of course there’s an art in it, as there is in every sport. And if the first torero doesn’t kill the bull there’s always a second. I guess I’m just not interested in being a bullfighter. I’m more the audience type.”

Dave Husack’s face was dangerously empurpled. He whipped out his handkerchief, he stood up behind his desk, he seemed to pound his face as he angrily dabbed at it with the scented fine linen.

“You’ve got a hell of a gall talking to me like that—you and your bullfights. For a fellow who’s so bored with the way his father gets it you spend a hell of a lot of money. If you don’t like money—–”

“I do. I haven’t said I didn’t. I think it’s great. I’m just not interested in the art of getting it, I suppose. I don’t even feel guilty about it, the way a lot of rich men’s sons do, always trying to give it away to foundations and stuff. I suppose that’s taxes. But they’re always apologizing for it. Joining movements and protesting. I’m no second- or third-generation Rockefeller or Lamont or Marshall Field. I think money’s fine.”

Dave Husack’s voice started low because he felt as if he were choking, but it rose triumphantly in volume.

“Why, you skunk, you! I’ve a good notion to sock you, big as you are, and I would, only now I think you’re crazy. I think something happened to your head in the war, and you didn’t tell us. Or else you’re a fairy.”

Bay shook his head, he rejected this equably. “No. I seem to be normal enough. But I feel and behave a good deal like those kids who are running the streets in ducktail haircuts and zoot pants and sideburns, only I wear tailored suits and ten-dollar ties.”