Worn out in mind and body he went back that evening to the little room. Yet here there was no surcease to be had. Wherever he carried his guilt he could find nought to assuage it. When he turned to the ancient authors their unceasing demand of Action, Action, Action seemed to make his vacillating weakness turn to a gangrene in his flesh. Yet was not this dreadful shibboleth of theirs the rock upon which the frail vessel had been shattered! With the modern authors he fared no better. Their cynicism became a callous mockery that had no power to heal. And when he turned to the Book of the Ages, his mind was coloured by so dark a horror that he failed to decipher a single word inscribed upon its leaves. They were as so many red blurs void of form and meaning. During the long hours of the night the aged man, his father, sat with the passage before him in which was expressed the deep truth that miracles would continue to happen to those who had the courage to be credulous. “Tell me, my father,” cried the young man at last in his despair, “what must happen to those who are too frail for action, too craven for belief?” “Even these must fulfil their destiny, beloved one,” said the white-haired man. XXXIII Pale with conflict William Jordan took himself yet again to No. 24 Trafalgar Square on the following day. He still carried in his pockets the twenty pieces of gold. His guilt was written in his mien, yet the little world about him could not read. “Mr. Jordan,” said Mr. W. P. Walkinshaw with great kindness, “it has seemed to me lately that all is not well with you. You have not been looking yourself. I would like to suggest that you take a fortnight’s rest; I think I can answer for it that the firm will raise no objection. I would like to suggest that you run down to Margate to take a breath of the sea.” “You are k-kind, sir,” said the young man, with the simplicity that the good Mr. Walkinshaw had long come to recognize as part of him, “but my m-malady is of another nature.” Mr. Walkinshaw shook his head solemnly, and subsequently observed to Mr. Aristophanes Luff, “That young man is suffering. He ought to seek medical advice.” “One can imagine that Hamlet looked like that,” mildly observed Mr. Aristophanes Luff. As William Jordan sat on his high stool in the left-hand corner, he saw through the glass partition that divided the counting-house from the exit into Trafalgar Square, Jimmy Dodson pass out of the door into the street. At the moment this apparently unrelated circumstance addressed his mind with no especial significance. But soon it began to produce a kind of vibration in it, as though it were charged with a meaning that his faculties had not the power to seize. Quite suddenly, however, the young man discarded the paper and string he was manipulating and came down from his high stool. “Oh, yes,” he muttered to himself softly, “I understand now, I understand now.”