looking up in surprise. "We're getting on, aren't we?"

"I have thought so before, so often," said my father, "and it has
always ended in a--in a collapse."

I put my arms round his neck, for I always felt to my father as to
another boy; bigger than myself and older, but not so very much.

"You see, when I married your mother," he went on, "I was a rich man.
She had everything she wanted."

"But you will get it all back," I cried.

"I try to think so," he answered. "I do think so--generally speaking.
But there are times--you would not understand--they come to you."

"But she is happy," I persisted; "we are all happy."

He shook his head.

"I watch her," he said. "Women suffer more than we do. They live
more in the present. I see my hopes, but she--she sees only me, and I
have always been a failure. She has lost faith in me.

I could say nothing. I understood but dimly.

"That is why I want you to be an educated man, Paul," he continued
after a silence. "You can't think what a help education is to a man.
I don't mean it helps you to get on in the world; I think for that it
rather hampers you. But it helps you to bear adversity. To a man