ame spirit Isaac sternly refrained from
inquiring into the state of Keith's finances; but from his personal
appearance he gathered that, if Keith returned to the shop, it would
not be hunger that would send him there. And if the young man's manner
had not suggested the unlikelihood of his return, a hint to that
effect was conveyed by his clothes. They were the symbols of
prosperity, nay more, of a social advance that there could be no going
back upon. Isaac had only to look at him to realize his separation.
The thing was monstrous, incomprehensible, but certain. But it was in
Keith's gaze (the gaze which he could never meet, so disturbing was it
in its luminous sincerity) that he read the signs of a more profound
and spiritual desertion.

Isaac stood pondering these things in the front shop, at the hour of
closing. As he moved drearily away, the lights were turned out one by
one behind him, the great iron shutters went up with a clang, and it
was dark in Rickman's.

That evening, instead of hailing a Liverpool Street 'bus, he crossed
the Strand and walked up Bow Street, and so into Bloomsbury. It was
the first time for four years that he had called in Tavistock Place.
He used to go up alone to the boarding-house drawing-room, and wait
there till Keith appeared and took him into his bedroom on the second
floor. Now his name brought an obsequious smile to the maid's face;
she attended him upstairs and ushered him with ceremony into a
luxurious library. Keith was writing at a table strewn with
manuscripts, and he did not look up all at once. The lamp-light fell
on his fair head and boyish face, and Isaac's heart yearned towards
his son. He held out his hand and smiled after his fashion, but said
no word.

The grip of the eager young hand gave him hope.

Keith drew up two chairs to the fire. The chairs were very deep, very
large, very low, comfortable beyond Isaac's dreams of comfort. Keith
lay back in his, graceful in his abandoned attitude; Isaac sat up very
straight and stiff, crushing in his knees the soft felt hat that made
him look for ever like a Methodist parson.

His eyes rested heavily on the littered table. "Well," he said, "how
long have you been at it?"

"Oh, ever since nine in the morning--"

(Longer hours than he had in the shop); "--and--I've two more hours to
put through still." (And yet he had received him gladly.)

"It doesn't look quite as easy as making catalogues."

"It isn't."

Isaac had