—Well my God Harry don’t tell, don’t get Oscar’s hopes up, I mean this whole brittle shell he’s put together for who he thinks he is now but suddenly I look through that mangy beard and cigar smoke and see the face of the little boy down there by the pond that day with the little canoe he’d made, he’d spent days at it stripping the bark off a beautiful white birch that stood there and Father, Father looking at it without a word like some terrible open wound, looking at the canoe sunk in the mud and he had the poor tree cut down the next day without a word, gone without a trace he never mentioned it again but he never let Oscar forget it, just with a look, it was all too heartbreaking and now he’s done it again. Oscar’s done it again setting himself up with these fantasies of producing his play when he wins this appeal and if he loses, this whole desperate pose as the gentleman poet, the last civilized man I mean he’s just really so different from who he thinks he is and God only knows, when he loses . . .