uation. Never had
he made a fool of himself. He often took keen pleasure in speculating
upon the demeanour of his father, his mother, his little sister, could
they have seen him in his purple and in his grandeur. They were all
dead. And those days were fading, fading, gone, with their unutterable,
intolerable shame and sadness, intolerable even in memory. And his wife
dead too! All that remained was Mr Shushions.

And then his business? Darius's pride in the achievement of his
business was simply indescribable. If he had not built up that
particular connexion he had built up another one whose sale had enabled
him to buy it. And he was waxing yearly. His supremacy as a printer
could not be challenged in Bursley. Steam! A double-windowed shop! A
foreman to whom alone he paid thirty shillings a week! Four other
employees! (Not to mention a domestic servant.) ... How had he done
it? He did not know. Certainly he did not credit himself with
brilliant faculties. He knew he was not brilliant; he knew that once or
twice he had had luck. But he had the greatest confidence in his
rough-hewing common sense. The large curves of his career were
correctly drawn. His common sense, his slow shrewdness, had been richly
justified by events. They had been pitted against foes--and look now at
the little boy from the Bastille!

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FIVE.

To Darius there was no business quite like his own. He admitted that
there were businesses much bigger, but they lacked the miraculous
quality that his own had. They were not sacred. His was, genuinely.
Once, in his triumphant and vain early manhood he had had a fancy for
bulldogs; he had bred bulldogs; and one day he had sacrificed even that
great delight at the call of his business; and now no one could guess
that he knew the difference between a setter and a mastiff!

It was this sacred business (perpetually adored at the secret altar in
Darius's heart), this miraculous business, and not another, that Edwin
wanted to abandon, with scarcely a word; just casually!

True, Edwin had told him one night that he would like to be an
architect. But Darius had attached no importance to the boyish remark.
Darius had never even dreamed that Edwin would not go into the business.
It would not have occurred to him to conceive such a possibility. And
the boy had shown great aptitude. The boy had saved the printing o