“What do you propose to do?” he cried. “Seven years of higher education, and--how many trips to Europe? And all the--that--feeling a man has for a child he has brought up--wasted, worse than wasted! What do you propose to do? Thirty years old, and a failure at the start! A disgrace to the faith of your fathers! A blot on an old religious name! Come, now! what next?... I suppose I could find you a place to sweep a store,” added Hermon Worcester bitingly. Emanuel had flushed darkly, and then his swift pallor came on. “Uncle,” he said distinctly, “I think this interview we have been preparing for so long may as well be dispensed with. It seems to me quite useless. I can only grieve you, sir; and you cannot comfort me.” “Comfort!” sneered the other, with his least agreeable expression; for Hermon Worcester had many, in frequent use. “Well,” said Emanuel, “yes. There are times when even a heretic may need something of that sort. But I was about to say that I think it idle for us to talk. My plans are now quite formed.” “Indeed, sir!” said Mr. Worcester, stopping short. “I have been invited by a minority of my people to start a new work in Windover, of which they propose that I shall become the leader.” “Not the pastor!” observed Mr. Worcester. “Yes, the pastor,--that was the word. It will be a work quite independent of the old church.” “And of the old faith, eh?” “Of the old traditions, some of them,” replied Emanuel gently; “not of the old truth, I hope. I cannot hope for your sympathy in this step. I have decided to take it. It strikes me, Uncle, that we had better not discuss the matter.” “His mother before him!” cried Hermon Worcester, violently striding up and down the velvet carpet of the library, “I went through it with his mother before him,--this abhorrent indifference to the demands of birth and training, this scandal, this withdrawal from the world, this publicity given to family differences, the whole miserable business! She for love, and you for--I suppose you call it religion! I can’t go through it again, and I won’t! It is asking too much of me!” “I ask nothing of you, Uncle,” said the young man, rising. “You’ll end in infidelity, sir. You will be an agnostic in a year’s time. You’ll be preaching positivism! I will have nothing to do with it! I warned you before, Manuel,--back there in Cesarea. I am forced to repeat myself. Under the circumstances, you will not expect a dollar from me. I would as soon leave my property to an atheist club as to you, and your second probations, and your uninspired Bibles!” Mr. Worcester snapped in the private drawer of his desk, and locked it with unnecessary force and symbolism. “I don’t forbid you my house, mind. I sha’n’t turn you into the street. You’ll starve into your senses fast enough on any salary that the rabble down in that fishing-town can raise for you. When you do--come back to me. Keep your latch-key in your pocket. You will want to use it some day.”