This meeting was terrible after all those years, for nothing in the world was so terrible as a scene.

They met and crossed hands without a word.

Then, with a quaver in his voice, the father said: "How are you, my boy ?" The son answered: "How are you, Dad ?" Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove.
"If you're going my way," he said, "I can give you a lift." And as though in the habit of taking each other home every night they went out and stepped into the cab.
To old Jolyon it seemed that his son had grown.

'More of a man altogether,' was his comment.

Over the natural amiability of that son's face had come a rather sardonic mask, as though he had found in the circumstances of his life the necessity for armour.