Paul started.  The assertion had a strange solemnity.  “Without impertinence,” said he, “why can’t it fail?”

“Because God is guiding it,” said Silas Finn.

The fanatic spoke.  Paul regarded him with renewed interest.  The black hair streaked with white, banging over the temples on the side away from the parting, the queerly streaked beard, the clear-cut ascetic features, the deep, mournful eyes in whose depths glowed a soul on fire, gave him the appearance of a mad but sanctified apostle.  Barney Bill, who profoundly distrusted all professional drinkers of water, such as Mr. Finn’s employees, ate his cold beef silently, in the happy surmise that no one was paying the least attention to his misperformances with knife, fork and fingers.  Jane looked steadily from Paul to Silas and from Silas to Paul.

Paul said:  “How do you know God is guiding it?”

At the back of his mind was an impulse of mirth—­there was a touch of humorous blasphemy in the conception of the Almighty as managing director of “Fish Palaces, Limited”—­but the nominal earthly managing director saw not the slightest humour in the proposition.

“Who is guiding you in your brilliant career?” he asked.

Paul threw out his hands, in the once practised and now natural foreign gesture.  “I’m not an atheist.  Of course I believe in God, and I thank Him for all His mercies—­”

“Yes, yes,” said his host.  “That I shouldn’t question.  But a successful man’s thanks to God are most often merely conventional.  Don’t think I wish to be offensive.  I only want to get at the root of things.  You are a young man, eight-and-twenty—­”

“How do you know that?” laughed Paul.

“Oh, your friends have told me.  You are young.  You have a brilliant position.  You have a brilliant future.  Were you born to it?”

There was Jane on the opposite side of the table, entirely uninterested in her food, looking at him in her calm, clear way.  She was so wholesome, so sane, in her young yet mature English lower-class beauty.  She had broad brows.  Her mass of dark brown hair was rather too flawlessly arranged.  He felt a second’s irritation at not catching any playfully straying strand.  She was still the Jane of his boyhood, but a Jane developed, a Jane from whom no secrets were hid, a searching, questioning and quietly disturbing Jane.

“A man is born to his destiny, whatever destiny may be,” said Paul.

“That is Mohammedan fatalism,” said Mr. Finn, “unless one means by destiny the guiding hand of the Almighty.  Do you believe that you’re under the peculiar care of God?”

“Do you, Mr. Finn?”

“I have said so.  I ask you.  Do you?”

“In a general way, yes,” said Paul.  “In your particular sense, no.  You question me frankly and I answer frankly.  You would not like me to answer otherwise.”

“Certainly not,” said his host.