He went into his father's study that night with a strange dismal foreboding as though he were being drawn along upon some path that he did not want to follow.What was his father mixed up with all this business for? Why were such men as Thurston in existence? Why couldn't life be simple and straightforward with people like his father and himself and that girl Maggie alone somewhere with nothing to interfere? Life was never just as you wanted it, always a little askew, a little twisted, cynically cocking its eye at you before it vanished round the corner? He didn't seem to be able to manage it.
Anyway, he wasn't going to have that fellow Thurston marrying his sister.
He found his father lying back in his arm-chair fast asleep, looking like a dead man, his long thin face pale with fatigue, his eyelids a dull grey, his mouth tightly closed as though in a grim determination to pursue some battle.And at the sight of him thus worn out and beaten Martin's affection flooded his heart.He stood opposite his father looking at him and loving him more deeply than he had ever done before.
"I will take him away from all this," was his thought, "these Thurstons and all--out of all this...We'll go off abroad somewhere.And I'll make him fat and happy."Then his father suddenly woke up, with a start and a cry: "Where am I?"...Then he suddenly saw Martin."Martin," he said, smiling.