Ah, well, each man must parley as best he may with the Angel who withstands him in the narrow place where there is no way to turn to the right hand or the left.  We desire at such times to be shown some such clear portraiture of the ideal to which we must conform in our place and circumstance as shall cause us no more to mistake good for evil.  Possibly, if such image of all we ourselves ought to be were given to our gaze, we could not look in its eyes and live.  Possibly, if Heaven granted us the knowledge of all thoughts and deeds that would make up the ideal self, we should go on our way producing vile imitations of it and neglecting Heaven, as they do who seek only to imitate the Divine Example.  At any rate, such perfection of self-ideal is not given us, except with the years that make up the sum of life.

CHAPTER VI.

Robert Trenholme had a lively wit, and it stood him many times in lieu of chapel walls for within it he could retire at all times and be hidden.  Of all that he experienced within his heart at this time not any part was visible to the brother who was his idle visitor; or perhaps only the least part, and that not until the moot point between them was touched upon.

There came a day, two days after the old preacher had been buried, when the elder brother called out: 

“Come, my lad, I want to speak to you.”

Robert was lying on a long couch improvised for him in the corner of his study.  The time was that warm hour of the afternoon when the birds are quiet and even the flies buzz drowsily.  Bees in the piebald petunias that grew straggling and sweet above the sill of the open window, dozed long in each sticky chalice.  Alec was taking off his boots in the lobby, and in reply to the condescending invitation he muttered some graceless words concerning his grandmother, but he came into the room and sat with his elbows on the table.  He had an idea of what might be said, and felt the awkwardness of it.

“That fellow Bates,” he observed, “is devouring your book-case indiscriminately.  He seems to be in the sort of fever that needs distraction every moment.  I asked him what he’d have to read, and he said the next five on the shelf—­he’s read the first ten.”

“It’s not of Bates I wish to speak; I want to know what you’ve decided to do.  Are you going to stick to your father’s trade, or take to some other?”

Robert held one arm above his head, with his fingers through the leaves of the book he had been reading.  He tried to speak in a casual way, but they both had a disagreeable consciousness that the occasion was momentous.  Alec’s mind assumed the cautious attitude of a schoolboy whispering “Cave”.  He supposed that the other hoped now to achieve by gentleness what he had been unable to achieve by storm.

“Of course,” he answered, “I won’t set up here if you’d rather be quit of me.  I’ll go as far as British Columbia, if that’s necessary to make you comfortable.”