y salutation more
cordial than the coldly absent-minded "good dog" he had just given to
Bob. Yet there must be points of contact in their characters. There must
be in himself something of his father. He could not so ridiculously
resemble him and yet have absolutely nothing mentally in common. Perhaps
his father did himself an injustice by his manner, for after all he had
presented him with that L150. If he could only probe by some remark a
generous impulse, Guy felt that in himself the affection of wonted
intercourse over many years would respond immediately with a warmth of
love. His father had cared greatly for his mother; and could not the
love they had both known supply them with the point of sympathetic
contact that would enable them to understand the ulterior intention of
their two diverging lives?

"It was awfully good of you, Father, to come down and stay here," said
Guy. "I've really been looking forward to showing you the house. I think
perhaps you understand now how much I've wanted to be here."

Guy waited anxiously.

"I've never thought you haven't wanted to be here," his father replied.
"But between what we want and what we own there is a wide gap."

Oh, why was a use to be made of these out-of-date weapons? Why could not
one or two of his prejudices be surrendered, so that there were a chance
of meeting him half-way?

"But sometimes," said Guy, desperately, "inclination and duty coincide."

"Very rarely, I'm afraid, in this world."

"Do they in the next, then?" asked Guy, a little harshly, hating the
conventionality of the answer that seemed to crystallize the
intellectual dishonesty of a dominie's existence. He knew that the next
world was merely an arid postulate which served for a few theorems and
problems of education, and that duty and desire must only be kept apart
on account of the hierarchical formulas of his craft. He must eternally
appear as half inhuman as all the rest of the Pharisees: priests,
lawyers, and schoolmasters, they were all alike in relying for their
livelihood upon a capacity for depreciating human nature.

"I was merely using a figure of speech," said his father.

Exactly, thought Guy, and how was he ever to justify his love for
Pauline to a man whose opinions could never be expressed except in
figures of speech? He made up his mind to postpone the visit to the
Rectory until to-morrow. Evidently it was not going to be made even
moderately easy to broach the subject of P