Just then a door clanged, Helen's light, laughing voice was heard in the hall, and the whole phantom sunk out of sight. He took hold of gross reality again, and saw his path, hard and lucid like a line of burnished gold, leading on to a bright shining ridge, on which arose the long colonnades of a great house, round which a multitude of people buzzed, and held out golden wreaths to him. In the reaction of emotion which ensued there came to him a new virility of purpose. To come so near those golden heights and miss them was a thing impossible. Once let him scale them, stand visibly triumphant--and then? Well, it would be time enough then to meditate upon the deep sad words of this old philosophic thinker which had so strangely moved him. Nevertheless, this softened mood did not wholly leave him all this Sabbath evening. The memory of his father had evoked also the memory of his son. For the first time a faint suspicion crossed his mind that, after all, Arthur might have chosen a form of life which promised greater happiness than his own. Through all the many months of absence he had rarely mentioned Arthur's name; if he had done so, it had been with a frowning brow. Now, to the surprise of both mother and daughter, he asked for Arthur's letters, took them with him into the office, and there read them quietly. "If he only had not gone away!" he said. And with that thought his sense of injury returned. It was a hard thing for a father to condone the implied condemnation of that flight. And the only rehabilitation of his pride lay in some visible success which even Arthur must respect. There was a lot of good that might be done with money. It was expected nowadays of rich men that they should be public benefactors. Here was an untried field which he might conquer; and what a fine irony it would be if Arthur should return to England some day to find the name of the father he had despised mentioned with general respect as a public benefactor! It was strange that he had not thought of that before. It would afford him a new interest in life, and be an exquisite revenge.