“You have no new potatoes, dear.  Charles, give Mr. Stone some new potatoes.”

By the almost vindictive expression on Stephen’s face she saw, however, that her failure had decided him to resume command of the situation.  “Talking of brotherhood, sir,” he said dryly, “would you go so far as to say that a new potato is the brother of a bean?”

Mr. Stone, on whose plate these two vegetables reposed, looked almost painfully confused.

“I do not perceive,” he stammered, “any difference between them.”

“It’s true,” said Stephen; “the same pale spirit can be extracted from them both.”

Mr. Stone looked up at him.

“You laugh at me,” he said.  “I cannot help it; but you must not laugh at life—­that is blasphemy.”

Before the piercing wistfulness of that sudden gaze Stephen was abashed.  Cecilia saw him bite his lower lip.

“We’re talking too much,” he said; “we really must let your father eat!” And the rest of the dinner was achieved in silence.

When Mr. Stone, refusing to be accompanied, had taken his departure, and Thyme had gone to bed, Stephen withdrew to his study.  This room, which had a different air from any other portion of the house, was sacred to his private life.  Here, in specially designed compartments, he kept his golf clubs, pipes, and papers.  Nothing was touched by anyone except himself, and twice a week by one particular housemaid.  Here was no bust of Socrates, no books in deerskin bindings, but a bookcase filled with treatises on law, Blue Books, reviews, and the novels of Sir Walter Scott; two black oak cabinets stood side by side against the wall filled with small drawers.  When these cabinets were opened and the drawers drawn forward there emerged a scent of metal polish.  If the green-baize covers of the drawers were lifted, there were seen coins, carefully arranged with labels—­as one may see plants growing in rows, each with its little name tied on.  To these tidy rows of shining metal discs Stephen turned in moments when his spirit was fatigued.  To add to them, touch them, read their names, gave him the sweet, secret feeling which comes to a man who rubs one hand against the other.  Like a dram-drinker, Stephen drank—­in little doses—­of the feeling these coins gave him.  They were his creative work, his history of the world.  To them he gave that side of him which refused to find its full expression in summarising law, playing golf, or reading the reviews; that side of a man which aches, he knows not wherefore, to construct something ere he die.  From Rameses to George IV. the coins lay within those drawers—­links of the long unbroken chain of authority.