loathsome to everyone. You could not stay.… I am thinking of going into an hospital instead of taking an apartment—if it can be managed as I want it. Starkie has gone to see. That was a foolish idea of mine: I am glad you came back. It is all right. Starkie knows all about it. If the doctors will only leave me alone.… Oh, boy,' he said, 'if you would but promise to try! Go back and study, say, for three years: only three years! And learn everything, everything! And then go down there for another year to learn the life. And you will pick up experience very quickly. I know you, Starkie says he will do it; he will not be too old: a brave fellow! Ah dear! ah dear! I have so many things that I want to tell you: so many, so many that they confuse me, and I can scarcely tell you anything. All one gigantic jumble, eh? But I have not been like myself since that dream.—You will promise?
I answered nothing.
He lifted up his head.
'Promise me! I am so sure you could do it. If you only had some beacon-light to steer by! At times I have thought that I am infatuated about you. You did not know that I was married once?… And God took away my son from me. Yet I bore it. And then my wife, too. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed he the name of the Lord." That was what Blake said to me in the evening when my son died. I only saw him dead. It was very sudden. Dear child! dear child!… You have something of him in you, Bertram, at times.… And then Ratcliffe came and fell ill. He was not worth much. Intelligent, and all that; but had no interest in his work, and could not have done much for it if he had had. And then God sent you to me. Your struggle in London!—Oh, you must promise me!… Ha! I am a fond old fool!'
At last:
'You have not answered me,' he said, 'will you not promise? How taciturn you are sometimes!'
'I cannot, sir. It is as if you asked me to become a priest, having no vocation.'
'But I have determined that you shall promise! I have made you my heir. I am not rich. Some eight
