my acquaintance with Miss Harland was restricted to a few casual condolences with her respecting the state of her health.  Yet it so chanced that one of those vague impulses to which we can give no name, but which often play an important part in the building up of our life-dramas, moved both father and daughter to a wish for my company.  Moreover, the wish was so strong that though on first receiving their invitation I had refused it, they repeated it urgently, Morton Harland himself pressing it upon me with an almost imperative insistence.

“You want rest,”—­he said, peering at me narrowly with his small hard brown eyes—­“You work all the time.  And to what purpose?”

I smiled.

“To as much purpose as anyone else, I suppose,”—­I answered—­“But to put it plainly, I work because I love work.”

The lines of his mouth grew harder.

“So did I love work when I was your age,”—­he said—­“I thought I could carve out a destiny.  So I could.  I have done it.  But now it’s done I’m tired!  I’m sick of my destiny,—­the thing I carved out so cleverly,—­it has the stone face of a Sphinx and its eyes are blank and without meaning.”

I was silent.  My silence seemed to irritate him, and he gave me a sharp, enquiring glance.

“Do you hear me?” he demanded—­“If you do, I don’t believe you understand!”

“I hear—­and I quite understand,”—­I replied, quietly, “Your destiny, as you have made it, is that of a rich man.  And you do not care about it.  I think that’s quite natural.”

He laughed harshly.

“There you are again!” he exclaimed—­“Up in the air and riding a theory like a witch on a broomstick!  It’s not natural.  That’s just where you’re wrong!  It’s quite Un-natural.  If a man has plenty of money he ought to be perfectly happy and satisfied,—­he can get everything he wants,—­he can move the whole world of commerce and speculation, and can shake the tree of Fortune so that the apples shall always fall at his own feet.  But if the apples are tasteless there’s something wrong.”

“Not with the apples,” I said.

“Oh, I know what you mean!  You would say the fault is with me, not with Fortune’s fruit.  You may be right.  Catherine says you are.  Poor mopish Catherine!—­always ailing, always querulous!  Come and cheer her!”

“But”—­I ventured to say—­“I hardly know her.”

“That’s true.  But she has taken a curious fancy to you.  She has very few fancies nowadays,—­none that wealth can gratify.  Her life has been a complete disillusion.  If you would do her and me a kindness, come!”

I was a little troubled by his pertinacity.  I had never liked Morton Harland.  His reputation, both as a man of wealth and a man of letters, was to me unenviable.  He did no particular good with his money,—­and such literary talent as he possessed he squandered in attacking nobler ideals than he had ever been able to attain.  He was not agreeable to look at either; his pale, close-shaven face was deeply marked by lines of avarice and cunning,—­his tall, lean figure had an aggressive air in its very attitude, and his unkind mouth never failed, whether in speaking or smiling, to express a sneer.  Apparently he guessed the vague tenor of my thoughts, for he went on:—­