His father clearly had been satisfied with the result; he appeared as
his father no more. Thenceforward he stalked his prey as
Nicolovius--with what consummate skill and success!
Oh, but did he not have a clever father, a stealthy, cunning, merciless
father, soft-winged, foul-eyed, hungry-taloned, flitting noiselessly in
circles, that grew ever and ever narrower, sure, and unfaltering to the
final triumphant swoop! Or no--Rather a coiled and quiescent father,
horrible-eyed, lying in slimy rings at the foot of the tree, basilisk
gaze fixed upward, while the enthralled bird fluttered hopelessly down,
twig by twig, ever nearer and nearer.
But no--his metaphors were very bad; he was sentimentalizing,
rhetorizing, a thing that he particularly abhorred. Not in any sense was
he the pitiful prey of his father, the hawk or the snake. Rather was he
glad that, after long doubt and perplexity, at last he knew. For that
was the passion of all his chaste life: to know the truth and to face it
without fear.
Surface stirred slightly in his bed, and Queed, turning his eyes, let
them rest briefly on that repulsive face.
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