There was Mr.Bates, one of the leading brethren then, who loved him and spoilt him ...

above all, through and beyond it all, there was his father, who adored him and whom he adored.
That adoration--of God, of his father, of life itself! Was it possible that a small boy, normal and ordinary enough in other ways, could feel so intensely such passions?
The dark room was crowding him with figures and scenes.

A whole world that he had thought dead and withered was beating--urgently, insistently, upon his consciousness.
In another instant he did not know what surrender, what acknowledgement he might have made.

It seemed to him that nothing in life was worth while save to receive again, in some fashion, that vitality that he had once known.
The door was flung open; a stream of light struck the dark; the shadows, memories, fled, helter-skelter, like crackling smoke into the air.
Amy stood in the doorway, blinking at him, scowling.

He knew, for some undefined reason, that he could not meet his father's eyes.