That evening, instead of hailing a Liverpool Street 'bus, he crossed the Strand and walked up Bow Street, and so into Bloomsbury. It was the first time for four years that he had called in Tavistock Place. He used to go up alone to the boarding-house drawing-room, and wait there till Keith appeared and took him into his bedroom on the second floor. Now his name brought an obsequious smile to the maid's face; she attended him upstairs and ushered him with ceremony into a luxurious library. Keith was writing at a table strewn with manuscripts, and he did not look up all at once. The lamp-light fell on his fair head and boyish face, and Isaac's heart yearned towards his son. He held out his hand and smiled after his fashion, but said no word. The grip of the eager young hand gave him hope. Keith drew up two chairs to the fire. The chairs were very deep, very large, very low, comfortable beyond Isaac's dreams of comfort. Keith lay back in his, graceful in his abandoned attitude; Isaac sat up very straight and stiff, crushing in his knees the soft felt hat that made him look for ever like a Methodist parson. His eyes rested heavily on the littered table. "Well," he said, "how long have you been at it?" "Oh, ever since nine in the morning--" (Longer hours than he had in the shop); "--and--I've two more hours to put through still." (And yet he had received him gladly.) "It doesn't look quite as easy as making catalogues." "It isn't." Isaac had found the opening he desired. "I should think all this literary work was rather a 'eavy strain." "It does make you feel a bit muzzy sometimes, when you're at it from morning to night." "Is the game worth the candle? Is it worth it? Have you made your fortune at it?" "Not yet." "Well--I gave you three years." Keith smiled. "What did you give me them for? To make my fortune in?" "To learn common-sense in." Keith laughed. "It wasn't enough for that. You should have given me three hundred, at the very least!" The laugh was discouraging, and Isaac felt that he was on the wrong tack. "I'd give you as many as you like, if I could afford to wait. But I consider I've waited long enough already." "What were you waiting for?" "For you to come back--" Keith's face was radiant with innocent inquiry. "--To come back into the business." The light of innocence died out of the face as suddenly as it had kindled. "My dear father, I shall never come back. I thought I'd made that very clear to you." "You never made it clear--your behaviour to me. Not but what I 'ad an idea, which perhaps I need not name. I've never asked what there was at the bottom of that foolish business, and I've never blamed you for it. If it made you act badly to me, I've reason to believe it kept you out of worse mischief."