He went and succeeded. He was a little amused to find in himself that he liked every one he met in his visits, and that despite this fact his report was unfavorable. Mr. Barlow made no comment at all. “It must have been an easy one,” said David to himself. But he realized that he had had a bully time: he was winning his spurs. Occasionally now, Mr. Barlow broke his silence: in the unobtrusive way with which he kept it. David was bewildered at his chief’s understanding of him. He had an uncanny way of choosing subjects for chance observation that came close home. “Could you find anything more human,” he once asked, “than this job of ours? Yet it deals with the cold matter of financial credits. The point is, Mr. Markand, there is no such animal as the ‘cold matter of financial credits.’ There’s human warmth, human smartness, human weakness everywhere. You can just bet there’s never another thing. You know it in a play of Shakespeare, don’t you? Get to know it in this play and you’ll have fun.” Mr. Barlow indeed seemed to have fun. “Well,” he greeted David, “ready this morning to sail the Spanish Main? Let’s see,--hm,” he was slicing his mail from one hand to another as one does with a pack of cards, “let’s see what’s on deck to-day.” It was hard to guess how old was Mr. Barlow. His short-cropped hair was uniformly graying: it had been black, it was now neither black nor gray. He was clean-shaven. David noticed two wide, deep folds pleating the cheeks of his generous long face. But the air of Mr. Barlow was young. David did observe a certain resoluteness in his good humor--a consistency perhaps too nurtured. At times, when his eyes wandered from his work and he sat there rigid, slowly beating his hand from the supported wrist upon the table as if to some inner rhythm, David saw a gathering sadness in his eyes. Before it could spread to the rest of his face Mr. Barlow routed it. He got up, he walked up and down, his little body had the lithe quickness of morning. He shrugged his sharp shoulders quite as he did when he smiled. The sadness was gone.... * * * * * It could not be long before this new bloom of contentment reached where Tom and David stood looking at each other. It was come and working over him as does all bloom: subtly, hidden away in the slow hours, swift alone in the achievement and perhaps in the passing--a thrust here of green, a burst there of bud, the alternate warm cradling of sun and shadow.... He was alone in his room. By breaking early from his work he overtook the long rays of the sun of afternoon pointing across his window into the East where the night rose. He squatted on the floor with crossed legs, arms folded. He stayed unmoved, and let his thoughts swirl about his gladness like birds circling a light-house.