Sometimes he would find Macklin, the sculptor--up from his atelier in the basement--buried in a chair and a book, pipe in mouth, before Gregg's fire--had been there for hours when Phil entered. Again he would catch the sound of the piano as he mounted the stairs, only to discover Putney, the landscape painter, running his fingers over the keys, while Adam stood before his easel touching his canvas here or there; or he would interrupt old Sonheim, who kept the book-shop at the corner, and who had known Adam for years--while he read aloud this and that quotation from a musty volume, Adam stretched out at full length on his divan, the smoke of his cigarette drifting blue in the overhead light. These restful contrasts to his own life interested and astonished him. Since his father's death he had had few hours of real repose. While not yet fifteen he had been thrown out into the world to earn his bread. A successful earning, for he was already head of his firm, in which his prospective father-in-law, Mr. Eggleston, the rich banker, was special partner, and young Eggleston the junior member. An honorable career, too, for the house stood high in the Street, and its credit was above reproach in the commercial world, their company--the Portage Copper Company, whose securities they financed--being one of the many important mining properties in the great Northwest. All this he owed to his own indomitable will and pluck, and to his untiring industry--a quality developed in many another young Southerner the victim of the war and its aftermath. And he was always welcome. Apart from the tie that bound them together--of which Philip was unconscious--Adam's heart went out to the young fellow as many another childless, wifeless man's has gone out to youth. He loved his enthusiasms, his industry, his successes. Most of all he loved the young man's frankness--the way in which he kept nothing back--even his earlier escapades, many of which he should have been ashamed of. Then again he loved the reverence with which Phil treated him, the deference to his opinions, the acceptance of his standards. Most of all he loved him for the memory of the long ago. It was only when the overmastering power of money became the dominant force--the one recognized and gloated over by Philip--that his face grew grave. It was then that the older and wiser man, with his keen insight into the human heart, trembled for the younger, fearing that some sudden pressure, either of fortune or misfortune, might sweep him off his feet. It was at these times--Philip's face all excitement with the telling--that Adam's penetrating eyes, searching into the inner places, would find the hard, almost pitiless lines which he remembered so well in the father's face repeated in the son's.