Lewis caught a wistful look in his father’s eyes.  He felt a sudden surge of love such as had come to him long years before when he had first sounded the depths of his father’s tenderness.  “There’s no light in all the world like cathedral light, Dad,” he said with a slight tremble in his voice, “and it shines through stained glass.”

“Thanks, boy, thanks,” said Leighton; then he smiled, and threw up his head.  Lewis had learned to know well that gesture of dismissal to a mood.

“Just one more word,” continued his father.  “When you do get down to working with your hands, don’t forget repression.  Classicism bears the relation to art that religion does to the world’s progress.  It’s a drag-anchor—­a sound measure of safety—­despised when seas are calm, but treasured against the hour of stress.  Let’s go and eat.”

Lewis rose and put his hand on his father’s arm.

“I’ll not forget this talk, Dad,” he said.

“I hope you won’t, boy,” said Leighton.  “It’s harder for me to talk to you than you think.  I’m driven and held by the knowledge that there are only two ways in which a father can lose his son.  One is by talking too much, the other’s by not talking enough.  The old trouble of the devil and the deep, blue sea; the frying-pan and the fire.  Come, we’ve been bandying the sublime; let’s get down to the level of stomachs and smile.  The greatest thing about man is the range of his octaves.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

For a week Lewis missed his father very much.  Every time he came into the flat its emptiness struck him, robbed him of gaiety, and made him feel as though he walked in a dead man’s shoes.  He was very lonely.

“Helton,” he said one night, “I wish things could talk—­these old chairs and the table and that big worn-out couch, for instance.”

“Lucky thing they can’t, sir,” mumbled Helton, holding the seam of the table-cloth in his teeth while he folded it.

“Why?” said Lewis.  “Why should it be lucky they can’t?  Don’t you suppose if they had the power of talk, they’d have the power of discretion as well, just as we have?”

“I don’t know about that, sir,” said Helton.  “Things is servants just like us serving-men is.  The more wooden a serving-man is in the matter of talk, the easier it is for ’im to get a plice.  If you ask me, sir, I would s’y as chairs is wooden and walls stone an’ brick for the comfort of their betters, an’ that they ’aven’t any too much discretion as it is, let alone talking.”

“Nelton,” said Lewis, “I’ve been waiting to ask you something.  I wonder if you could tell me.”

“Can’t s’y in the dark,” said Nelton.

“It’s this,” said Lewis.  “Everybody here—­all dad’s friends except Lady Derl—­call him Grapes Leighton.  Why?  I’ve started to ask him two or three times, but somehow something else seems to crop up in his mind, and he doesn’t give me a chance to finish.”