mly on to the finger and his cries died down; his mouth
twitched and puckered to an absurd smile. Ishmael felt an exquisite glow
suffuse his tired heart that had been so dry for months. He dared not
make a sound for fear he broke the spell of contentment that held the
baby and himself; he stayed with his finger enwrapped by those tiny
clinging fingers till long after the baby had fallen asleep again. Then
he crept from the room, and meeting the nurse his face assumed a blank
and casual expression. But his heart guarded the glow that had been lit,
which grew within him.

He began to work at Cloom as never before, because this time he was not
working for himself. As the baby grew and became more and more of a
delight and a companion--and a baby can be an excellent companion--he
felt within him a steady gleam that did not flicker with the mood of the
hour as so many gleams will. He told himself, as he settled into a
manner of life and thought of which the child was the inalienable
centre, that this was indeed the greatest thing in life. Before this,
desire paled and self died down; in the white light of this love all
others faded in smoke, except the love of heaven, of which it was a
part. By heaven he meant not only the future state of the soul, but the
earth on which he trod, and the only thing likely to become pernicious
during the years that followed was his obsession with the one idea and
his certainty that he had found the great secret.

Yet in spite of the passion which held him, and which he told himself
was the master passion, there at times, and more as the years went on,
would arise in him the old feeling--the feeling that something must
surely happen, that round the corner awaited events of which the mere
expectation made each day's awakening a glowing thing. Life was young
and insistent in his veins, and with the lifting dawns, the recurrent
springs, it began to sing anew--for him as apart from his child. Not yet
had he found any one thing to make the complete round, to give him
enough whereby to live without further questioning.

CHAPTER V

CENTRIPETAL MOVEMENT

While little Nicky was still too young to need troubling over in the
matter of schooling, Ishmael yet found himself for the first time
considering the subject, not so much as it would affect his child, but
as it bore upon the children of the countryside--children such as his
own brothers had been, as he might have been himself.... The Edu