Presently, as Matthew Kendrick lay down in the soft bed, his face toward the glow of his fire that he might watch it, Richard knocked and came in from his own room and, crossing to the bed, stood leaning on the foot-board.

“Too sleepy to talk, grandfather?” he asked.

“Not at all, my boy,” responded the old man, his heart stirring in his breast at this unwonted approach at an hour when the two were usually far apart.  Never that he could remember had Richard come into his room after he had retired.

“I wanted to tell you,” said the young man, speaking very gently, “that you’ve been awfully kind, and have done us all a lot of good to-day.  And you’ve done me most of all.”

“Why, that’s pleasant news, Dick,” answered old Matthew Kendrick, his eyes fixed on the shadowy outlines of the face at the foot of the bed.  “Sit down and tell me about it.”

So Richard sat down, and the two had such a talk as they had had never before in their lives—­a long, intimate talk, with the barriers down—­the barriers which both felt now never should have existed.  Lying there in the soft bed of Aunt Ruth’s best feathers, with the odour of her lavender in his nostrils, and the sound of the voice he loved in his ears, the old man drank in the delight of his grandson’s confidence, and the wonder of something new—­the consciousness of Richard’s real affection, and his heart beat with slow, heavy throbs of joy, such as he had never expected to feel again in this world.

“Altogether,” said Richard, rising reluctantly at last, as the tall old clock on the landing near-by slowly boomed out the hour of midnight, “it’s been a great day for me.  I’d been looking forward with quite a bit of dread to bringing you up, I knew you’d see so plainly wherever we were lacking; but you were so splendidly kind about it—­”

“And why shouldn’t I be kind, Dick?” spoke his grandfather eagerly.  “What have I in the world to interest me as you and your affairs interest me?  Can any possible stroke of fortune seem so great to me as your development into a manhood of accomplishment?  And when it is in the very world I know so well and have so near my heart—­”

Richard interrupted him, not realizing that he was doing so, but full of longing to make all still further clear between them.  “Grandfather, I want to make a confession.  This world of yours—­I didn’t want to enter it.”

“I know you didn’t, Dick.  And I know why.  But you are getting over that, aren’t you?  You are beginning to realize that it isn’t what a man does, but the way he does it, that matters.”

“Yes,” said Richard slowly.  “Yes, I’m beginning to realize that.  And do you want to know what made me realize it to-day, as never before?”

The old man waited.

“It was the sight of you, sir—­and—­the recognition of the power you have been all your life;—­and the—­sudden appreciation of the”—­he stumbled a little, but he brought the words out forcefully at the end—­“of the very great gentleman you are!”