Miss Harland was restricted to a few casual condolences with her
respecting the state of her health. Yet it so chanced that one of
those vague impulses to which we can give no name, but which often
play an important part in the building up of our life-dramas, moved
both father and daughter to a wish for my company. Moreover, the
wish was so strong that though on first receiving their invitation I
had refused it, they repeated it urgently, Morton Harland himself
pressing it upon me with an almost imperative insistence.

"You want rest,"--he said, peering at me narrowly with his small
hard brown eyes--"You work all the time. And to what purpose?"

I smiled.

"To as much purpose as anyone else, I suppose,"--I answered--"But to
put it plainly, I work because I love work."

The lines of his mouth grew harder.

"So did I love work when I was your age,"--he said--"I thought I
could carve out a destiny. So I could. I have done it. But now it's
done I'm tired! I'm sick of my destiny,--the thing I carved out so
cleverly,--it has the stone face of a Sphinx and its eyes are blank
and without meaning."

I was silent. My silence seemed to irritate him, and he gave me a
sharp, enquiring glance.

"Do you hear me?" he demanded--"If you do, I don't believe you
understand!"