_
In the first crushing burst of revelation, Queed had had a wild impulse
to wash his hands of everything, and fly. He would pack Surface off to a
hospital; dispose of the house; escape back to Mrs. Paynter's; forget
his terrible knowledge, and finally bury it with Surface. His reason
fortified the impulse at every point. He owed less than nothing to his
father; he had not the slightest responsibility either toward him or for
him; to acknowledge the relation between them would do no conceivable
good to anybody. He would go back to the Scriptorium, and all would be
as it had been before.
But when the moment came either to go or to stay, another and deeper
impulse rose against this one, and beat it down. Within him a voice
whispered that though he might go back to the Scriptorium, he would
never be as he had been before. Whether he acknowledged the relation or
not, it was still there. And, in time, his reason brought forth material
to fortify this impulse, too: it came out in brief, grim sentences which
burned themselves into his mind. Surface was his father. To deny the
primal blood-tie was not honorable.
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