What it came to was that some one must clear the air, some one must break this painful silence they were, by common consent, keeping about the subject uppermost in their minds. In a few days now Edward would return to Oxford for his last term and it must be understood, explicitly, that when he came home it was to begin his apprenticeship at the factory. Get this thing finally settled, get it definitely stated in terms on both sides, and Dorothy would cease to make a grief of it. It was the inconclusiveness, he thought, which perturbed her. Edward had a Greek text on his knee when Reuben went into the drawing-room: he might or he might not have been reading it. He might have been conscious that Dorothy had suddenly got up and thrown the curtains back from the window and had opened it and stood there now as if she needed air. Reuben had the tact to make no comment. He sat down. Then he said, “Edward, I have been thinking of the time when I was your age and it came into my mind that had I then been shown a factory such as I showed you the other week, I should have thought it a very atrocious sight. I couldn’t, of course, actually have been shown such a place when I was your age, for there were no such places. Steam was in its infancy. But I put the matter as I do to show you that I understand the feelings you did not trouble to conceal.” “Thank you, sir,” said Edward. “I have to acknowledge that I was not complimentary to your achievement. I was not thinking of it as an achievement, but I, too, have been thinking and I see how cubbishly I failed in my appreciation.” “Come,” said Reuben, “this is better.” “As far as it goes, sir, yes. But I am not to go much further. In the shock of seeing the ugliness of that place, I believe that I forgot my manners--more than my manners. I forgot your mastery of steam. I forgot that having turned manufacturer, you became a great manufacturer. I--” he hesitated. “I am not trying to be handsome. I am trying to be just.” “Just?” “And, believe me, trying not to be smug. I only plead, sir, that I am old enough to know my own tastes.” “Are you? I can only look back to myself, Edward, and I am certain that when I was your age, I had no taste for work.” “A barrister’s is a busy life, sir. That is what I seek to persuade you.” “And I grant you that it may be. I will grant even that you may have a taste for work, and work of a legal kind. And I have still to ask you if you think it right to put selfish tastes in front of plain duty.” “Oh, why did you send me to Oxford, sir? Why, if you destined me for the factory, did you first show me the pleasantness of the world?”