was made to the business that had driven them apart.  In the same spirit Isaac sternly refrained from inquiring into the state of Keith’s finances; but from his personal appearance he gathered that, if Keith returned to the shop, it would not be hunger that would send him there.  And if the young man’s manner had not suggested the unlikelihood of his return, a hint to that effect was conveyed by his clothes.  They were the symbols of prosperity, nay more, of a social advance that there could be no going back upon.  Isaac had only to look at him to realize his separation.  The thing was monstrous, incomprehensible, but certain.  But it was in Keith’s gaze (the gaze which he could never meet, so disturbing was it in its luminous sincerity) that he read the signs of a more profound and spiritual desertion.

Isaac stood pondering these things in the front shop, at the hour of closing.  As he moved drearily away, the lights were turned out one by one behind him, the great iron shutters went up with a clang, and it was dark in Rickman’s.

That evening, instead of hailing a Liverpool Street ’bus, he crossed the Strand and walked up Bow Street, and so into Bloomsbury.  It was the first time for four years that he had called in Tavistock Place.  He used to go up alone to the boarding-house drawing-room, and wait there till Keith appeared and took him into his bedroom on the second floor.  Now his name brought an obsequious smile to the maid’s face; she attended him upstairs and ushered him with ceremony into a luxurious library.  Keith was writing at a table strewn with manuscripts, and he did not look up all at once.  The lamp-light fell on his fair head and boyish face, and Isaac’s heart yearned towards his son.  He held out his hand and smiled after his fashion, but said no word.

The grip of the eager young hand gave him hope.

Keith drew up two chairs to the fire.  The chairs were very deep, very large, very low, comfortable beyond Isaac’s dreams of comfort.  Keith lay back in his, graceful in his abandoned attitude; Isaac sat up very straight and stiff, crushing in his knees the soft felt hat that made him look for ever like a Methodist parson.

His eyes rested heavily on the littered table.  “Well,” he said, “how long have you been at it?”

“Oh, ever since nine in the morning—­”

(Longer hours than he had in the shop); “—­and—­I’ve two more hours to put through still.” (And yet he had received him gladly.)

“It doesn’t look quite as easy as making catalogues.”

“It isn’t.”

Isaac had found the opening he desired.  “I should think all this literary work was rather a ’eavy strain.”

“It does make you feel a bit muzzy sometimes, when you’re at it from morning to night.”

“Is the game worth the candle?  Is it worth it?  Have you made your fortune at it?”

“Not yet.”

“Well—­I gave you three years.”