could fittingly mark some change. A word to Annie produced no result, a
hint to Vassie and the thing was in full swing. Ishmael always thought
it was his own idea that Killigrew, back in London from his Paris
studies, should be asked down to Cloom. It was not everyone that could
have been called in to help at celebrating a twenty-first birthday under
such circumstances as Ishmael's; it could hardly be made an occasion for
feasting tenantry and neighbouring gentry, but it might be used for what
Boase, through Killigrew, hoped--the disruption of an atmosphere. That
done, a new one could be created.

Killigrew arrived. He startled the natives considerably by his loose
jacket and flowing tie, but his red hair was cut fairly short, though
his chin was decked by a soft young pointed beard that gave him a
Mephistophelian aspect ludicrously set at naught by his white eyelashes,
which, round his more short-sighted eye, were set off by a single glass.

As Ishmael drove him from Penzance through the warm, clear May afternoon
Killigrew waxed enthusiastic with appreciation of what he saw.

"Anyone living here should be perfectly happy," he declared. "I don't
wonder you've never wanted to leave. It has more to it, so to speak,
than our old country round St. Renny."

For a moment Ishmael made no reply; it was the first time it had
occurred to him it would be possible to leave Cloom, and though he knew
that up to now he had not wanted to, yet he was not quite pleased that
Killigrew should take it so for granted. He sent his mind back over the
years since he had seen his friend, comparing what had happened to
himself with all that happened to Killigrew as far as he could imagine
it--which was not very far. Killigrew was the more changed; his beard
and the lines of humour--and other things--round his eyes, made him seem
older than his twenty-two years, but it was more the growth in him
mentally that had been so marked as to suggest that he had changed. This
was not so, as the alterations had all marched in inevitable
directions--it could not have been otherwise in one who lived so by his
instincts as Killigrew, and held them so sacred. He had not changed, but
he had developed so far that to Ishmael he seemed disconcertingly
altered.

"It's all right for me," said Ishmael at last, "but I expect you'll find
it dull after Paris. It must all be so different over there."

"Oh, Paris is Paris, of course, and unlike anything else on earth.