ns?"

"None."

Isaac's heart leapt high.

"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

"How can I, when I haven't seen the lady?"

"You would, if you _had_ seen her."

"And when is it to be? Like most young people, you're a bit impatient,
I suppose?"

Keith betrayed the extremity of his impatience by a painful flush.
This subject of his marriage was not to be approached without a
certain shame.

"I suppose so; and like most young people we shall have to wait."

Isaac's eyes narrowed and blinked in the manner of a man uncertain of
his focus; as it happened, he was just beginning to see.

"Ah--that's what's wearing you out, is it?"

"I'm beginning to get a bit sick of it, I own."

"What's she like to look at it, this young lady? Is she pretty?"

"Very."

A queer hungry look came over the boy's face. Isaac had seen that look
there once or twice before. His lips widened in a rigid smile; he had
to moisten them before they would stretch. He was profoundly moved by
Keith's disclosure, by the thought of that imperishable and untameable
desire. It held for him the promise of his own continuance. It stirred
in him the strange fury of his fatherhood, a fatherhood destructive
and malign, that feeds on the life of children. As he looked at his
son his sickly frame trembled before that embodiment of passion and
vigour and immortal youth. He longed to possess himself of these
things, of the superb young intellect, of the abounding life, to
possess himself and live.

And he would possess them. Providence was on his side. Providence had
guided him. He could not have chosen his moment better; he had come at
a crisis in Keith's life. He knew the boy's nature; after all, he
would be brought back to him by hunger, the invincible, implacable
hunger of the flesh.

"Your mother was pretty. But she lost her looks before I could marry
her. I had to wait for her; so I know what you're going through. But I
fancy waiting comes harder on you than it did on me."

"It does," said Keith savagely. "Every day I think I'll marry
to-morrow and risk it. But," he added in a gentler tone, "that might
come hard on her."

"You _could_ marry to-morrow, if you'd accept the proposal I came to
make to you."

Keith gave a keen look at his father. He had been touched by the bent
figure, the wasted face; the evident signs of sickness and suffering.
He had resolved to be very tender with him. But not even pity could
blind him to the detestable cu