"Jack is a fool," his father answered bitterly. "He could have been anything almost if he had followed out my wishes." St. John smiled faintly. He did not resent the slighting epithet applied to himself; he understood in a way, the old man's keen disappointment, and felt more sorry than chagrined at his unrelenting harshness. "Don't think too much about it, sir," he said; "I should have been bound to fail you somehow. I was never one of those brainy ambitious fellows, you know; it takes more than money to make a great career." "It takes a _man_," Mr St. John answered sententiously. He had not sat down throughout the brief interview, although his son had placed a chair for him, and now he turned to go with less ceremony than when he entered. He even omitted the courtesy of bowing to Jill; he simply walked out without looking at her. St. John followed him and opened the shop door for him to pass through. "Good-bye," he said earnestly. "I regret the breach between us with all my heart--though that will hardly bridge it over, will it? If at any time you want me you have only to command." "You have always obeyed my commands so readily, eh?" retorted his father. "I am not likely to trouble you again. By the way you need not consider it necessary in future to make a kind of family Bible of me for the chronicling of domestic events. Our intercourse is at an end from this date. I neither wish to hear of, nor to see you again." CHAPTER TWENTY. When St. John had closed the door after his father he walked into the studio and busied himself unnecessarily shifting back scenes and rearranging everything in order to work off the depression the recent interview had left behind. He thoroughly understood that this was the final break with his father, and the realisation cost him more than one pang of bitter regret. He felt that to a certain extent he had been wanting in duty, and yet he knew that he could not have acted otherwise; the whole thing was as deplorable as it was inevitable; and it might have been so different had it not been for the obstinate pride of one ambitious old man.