With this conviction came a tendency to depression, inclination for silence and retrospection, not entirely free from melancholy. Not unnoticed by his physician, either, who had arrived at his own conclusions. The medical treatment, however, continued on the same lines sketched out by the first prescriptions, except that all narcotics and stimulants were forbidden. John Cleland now made it a custom to go every day to his club, read in the great, hushed library, gossip with the older members, perhaps play a game of chess with some friend of his early youth, lunch there with ancient cronies, sometimes fall asleep in one of the great, deep chairs in the lounging hall. And, as he had always been constitutionally moderate, the physician’s edict depriving him of his cigar and his claret annoyed him scarcely at all. Always he returned to the home on 80th Street, when his only son was likely to be free from work; and together they dined at home, or more rarely at Delmonico’s; and sometimes they went together to some theatre or concert. For they were nearer to each other than they had ever been in their lives during those quiet autumn and winter days together; and they shared every thought—almost every thought—only Cleland had never spoken to his son about the medicine he was taking regularly, nor of that odd experience when he had found himself standing dazed and speechless by his own bed in the silence and darkness of early morning. Stephanie came back at Christmas—a lovely surprise—a supple, grey-eyed young thing, grown an inch and a half taller, flower-fresh, instinct with the intoxicating vigour and delight of mere living, and tremulous with unuttered and very youthful ideas about everything on earth. She kissed Cleland Senior, clung to him, caressed him. But for the first time her demonstration ended there; she offered her hand to Jim in flushed and slightly confused silence. "What’s the matter with you, Steve?" demanded the youth, half laughing, half annoyed. "You think you’re too big to kiss me? By Jove, you shall kiss me——!" And he summarily saluted her. She got away from him immediately with an odd little laugh, and held tightly to Cleland Senior again. "Dad darling, darling!" she murmured, "I’m glad I’m back. Are _you_? Do you really _want_ me? And I’m going to tell you right now, I don’t wish to have you arrange parties and dinners and dances and things for me. All I want is to be with you and go to the theatre every night——" "Good Lord, Steve! That’s no programme for a pretty little girl!" "I’m _not_! Don’t call me that! I’ve got a mind! But I _have_ got such lots to learn—so many, many things to learn! And only one life to learn them in——" "Fiddle!" remarked Jim. "It really isn’t fiddle, Jim! I’m just crazy to learn things, and I’m not one bit interested in frivolity and ordinary things and people——" "You liked people once; you liked to dance——"