rden it was already night.

V

RICHES WITHOUT REST

NO outward change came to the House of the Golden Pillars.
Everything moved as smoothly, as delicately, as prosperously, as
before. But inwardly there was a subtle, inexplicable
transformation. A vague discontent--a final and inevitable sense
of incompleteness, overshadowed existence from that night when
Hermas realized that his joy could never go beyond itself.

The next morning the old man whom he had seen in the Grove of
Daphne, but never since, appeared mysteriously at the door of the
house, as if he had been sent for, and entered, to dwell there like
an invited guest.

Hermas could not but make him welcome, and at first he tried to
regard him with reverence and affection as the one through whom
fortune had come. But it was impossible. There was a chill in the
inscrutable smile of Marcion, as he called himself, that seemed to
mock at reverence. He was in the house as one watching a strange
experiment--tranquil, interested, ready to supply anything that
might be needed for its completion, but thoroughly indifferent to
the feelings of the subject; an anatomist of life, looking curiously
to see how long it would continue, and how it would behave, after
the heart had been removed.

In his presence Hermas was conscious of a certain irritation, a
resentful anger against the calm, frigid scrutiny of the eyes that
followed him everywhere, like a pair of spies, peering out over the
smiling mouth and the long white beard.

"Why do you look at me so curiously?" asked Hermas, one morning, as
they sat together in the library. "Do you see anything strange in
me?"

"No," answered Marcion; "something familiar."

"And what is that?"

"A singular likeness to a discontented young man that I met some
years ago in the Grove of Daphne."

"But why should that interest you? Surely it was to be expected."

"A thing that we expect often surprises us when we see it. Besides,
my curiosity is piqued. I suspect you of keeping a secret from me."

"You are jesting with me. There is nothing in my life that you do
not know. What is the secret?"

"Nothing more than the wish to have one. You are growing tired of
your bargain. The game wearies you. That is foolish. Do you want to
try a new part?"

The question was like a mirror upon which one comes suddenly in a
half-lighted room, A quick illumination falls on it, and the
passer-by is startled by the look of his own face.