ight his face (a face not
specially designed for pathos) looked limp and utterly dejected.

"I think, Keith," said Flossie, "you'd better ring again." Ringing was
a concession to propriety that Flossie insisted on and he approved. He
rang again; and Mrs. Downey in a beautiful wrapper herself opened the
door. At the sight of Spinks she gave a joyful exclamation and invited
him into the hall. They left him there.

"What's up?" asked Rickman as they parted on his landing.

"Who with? Sidney? I can't tell you--really."

"I wonder why he left."

"I can't tell you that, either." They said good-night at the foot of
the stairs, and she kissed him laughing. And the two men heard it
echoing in their dreams, that mysterious laughter of woman, which is
as the ripple over the face of the deep.

CHAPTER XLVIII

Isaac Rickman stood in his front shop at the close of a slack winter
day. He looked about him with a gaze uncheered by the contemplation of
his plate-glass and mahogany; and as he looked he gathered his beard
into a serious meditative hand, not as of old, but with a certain
agitation in the gesture.

Isaac was suffering from depression; so was the book-trade. Every year
the pulse of business beat more feebly, and in the present year,
eighteen ninety-six, it was almost standing still. Isaac had seen the
little booksellers one by one go under, but their failure put no heart
into him; and now the wave of depression was swallowing him up too. He
had not got the grip of the London book-trade; he would never build
any more Gin Palaces of Art; he had not yet freed himself from the
power of Pilkington; and more than all his depression the mortgage of
the Harden Library weighed heavily on his soul. The Public in which he
trusted had grown tricky; and he found that even capital and
incomparable personal audacity are powerless against the malignity of
events.

For his own part Isaac dated his decline from the hour of his son's
defection. He had not been brought to this pass by any rashness in
speculation, or by any flaw whatever in his original scheme. But his
original scheme had taken for granted Keith's collaboration. He had
calculated to a nicety what it would cost him to build up his
fortunes; and all these calculations had been based on the union of
his own borrowed capital with Keith's brilliant brains. And Keith with
unimaginable perfidy had removed himself and his brilliant brains at
the crisis of the start. I