day when the two visitors were to leave. Their birthday
gift to the young gentleman so lately christened Lorentz Uthoug stood in
the drawing-room; it was a bust in red granite, the height of a man,
of the Sun-god Re Hormachis, brought with them by the godfathers from
Alexandria. And now it sat in the drawing-room between palms in pots,
pressing its elbows against its sides and gazing with great dead eyes
out into endless space.

Peer stood on the quay waving farewell to his old comrades as the
steamer ploughed through the water, drawing after it a fan-shaped trail
of little waves.

And when he came home, he walked about the place, looking at farms and
woods, at Merle and the children, with eyes that seemed to her strange
and new.

Next night he stayed up once more alone, pacing to and fro in the great
hall, and looking out of the windows into the dark.

Was he ravelling out his life into golden threads that vanished and were
forgotten?

Was he content to be fuel instead of light?

What was he seeking? Happiness? And beyond it? As a boy he had called
it the anthem, the universal hymn. What was it now? God? But he would
hardly find Him in idleness.

You have drawn such nourishment as you could from joy in your home, from
your marriage, your fatherhood, nature, and the fellowmen around you
here. There are unused faculties in you that hunger for exercise; that
long to be set free to work, to strive, to act.

You should take up the barrage on the Besna, Peer. But could you get
the contract? If you once buckle-to in earnest, no one is likely to beat
you--you'll get it, sure enough. But do you really want it?

Are you not working away at a mowing-machine as it is? Better own up
that you can't get on without your old craft, after all--that you must
for ever be messing and meddling with steel and fire. You can't help
yourself.

All the things your eyes have been fixed on in these last years have
been only golden visions in a mist. The steel has its own will. The
steel is beginning to wake in you--singing--singing--bent on pressing
onward. You have no choice.

The world-will goes on its way. Go with it or be cast overboard as
useless.

And still Peer walked up and down, up and down.

Next morning he set off for the capital. Merle watched the carriage as
it drove away, and thought to herself: "He was right. Something new is
beginning."

Chapter IX

There came a card from Peer, with a brief message: "Off