of things filled his mind sufficiently.

His first business was to wait upon the family jeweller in Oxford
Street, from whom he had made occasional purchases for birthday
presents. The experience was a strange one for him, and he felt
somewhat timid about it. However, when he had explained what he
wanted, he was agreeably astonished at the man's insisting, with a
great show of goodwill towards him, he must accommodate him with
fifty pounds, and before Morgan had recovered from his flurry, he had
given an I. O. U. for the amount and had bank notes in his pocket.

"Why, I shouldn't think of charging _you_ any interest," the jeweller
had declared, and Morgan was much puzzled to understand why. Nor did
he quite know what this piece of paper he had signed represented.

He had now accomplished all the action his brain had planned, and it
was time to go and meet his father. And then it struck him as curious
that life seemed to be ignoring his ideas and to be taking him forward
despite himself. With all his intense feeling that he must complete
his disattachment from the past, its impetus was stronger than he.
Somehow he _must_ go and meet his father; he _must_ dine with the
Medhursts that evening.

As was clear from Archibald Druce's note, the relation between father
and son was scarcely so theatrical as Ingram might have gathered from
Morgan's talk the evening before, a fact of which Morgan was well
aware. He had not really intended to give Ingram a theatrical
impression, but the somewhat subtle truth could never have been
conveyed in the few words they had had together, apart from the fact
that it must inevitably have got coloured by the mood of the moment.

There had been many vicissitudes between father and son. The latter
well remembered the moment when, unable to keep his big idea to
himself any longer, he had divulged it to his father as they were
strolling together in the grounds one sunny afternoon. The two had
always been on the best of terms. Now Archibald Druce's ideas about
his Morgan's career had been definitely shaped for years. He intended
that the boy should, after passing through the University, enter the
banking business with which his whole life had been associated, and
ultimately become a partner therein. But Morgan's own idea of his
mission in life seemed to the banker so extraordinary that it made him
laugh outright. Unfortunately, too, in addition to pooh-poohing his
son's unexpected ambition, he w