Joan leaned against the trunk of the acacia and smiled at the clouds. A cataract of golden light poured through the delicate foliage, smiting the shadowy grass with green splendor, painting quivering fleur-de-lis upon the girl’s dark dress. “Father,” she said, gently enough, “I often wonder what you live for.” The man in the chair bit his pipe-stem and frowned. “You do, do you!” “I am young, you are old. What pleasures can you find in life?” Zeus Gildersedge eyed her keenly under his drooping lids. “What do most men live for?” he asked her. “How should I know?” she answered him. “Money, gold bags, beer, and bed. You will understand it all well enough some day.” She looked at him with her large, gray eyes, calm and incredulous. “And what, then, of death,” she asked, “if we live for nothing more than this?” The man straightened in his chair. “What’s that?” “Death.” “What’s death to you?” “The falling of leaves and a silence as of snow under a winter sky. I often think of death; nor is it strange to me. Do you fear the grave?” “Stop this nonsense,” said the man, with some symptoms of rebellion. “Are you happy?” Zeus Gildersedge wriggled in his chair. “When I want your sympathy I’ll ask for it,” he said. “You’re a little too forward for your years, my dear. Don’t worry your head about my future. Keep your sentimentalities for the birds and the bees and the twaddling rubbish you read in books. Damn sentiment. Supper at eight.” When the girl had gone Zeus Gildersedge clutched his ledger to him, his brows knitted into a scowl of thought. His hands strained at the book with a tremulous intensity, while his eyes stared into space. Overhead a blackbird was pouring a deep torrent of song to join the sunlight. A slight breeze made the boughs oracular with sudden mysterious mutterings. The beneficent eyes of the universe seemed to watch with a scornful pity the vague dreads of infidelity and greed. As though waking from some unflattering dream, Zeus Gildersedge’s hands relaxed and suffered the book to slip slowly into his lap. He breathed an oath under his breath, gulped down a mouthful of claret, and lay back in his chair chuckling. V ‟I DETEST prigs,” said Mrs. Marjoy, as her hands flickered over the tea-tray in the drawing-room of The Hermitage. “And of that tribe commend me to young Strong as the prince of the sect.” Mrs. Marjoy was one of those irreproachably vulgar persons whose mission in life appears to be the distilling of spiritual nostrums for the consciences of their neighbors. She was a born critic, a mercurial being ingrained with prejudice and dowered with an inordinate self-esteem. She had run “to tongue” in a remarkable degree; moreover, she scanned the world through the prisms of a none too generous philosophy.