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“To try to find out?” his father echoed compassionately. “It’s not necessary to try very hard. Goodness is what makes the world better.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” his son nervously interposed; “but the question is, what is good–“

Mr. Spence, with a darkening brow, brought his fist down emphatically on the damask. “I’ll thank you not to blaspheme, my son!”

Draper’s head reared itself a trifle higher on his thin neck. “I was not going to blaspheme; only there may be different ways–“

“There’s where you’re mistaken, Draper. There’s only one way: there’s my way,” said Mr. Spence in a tone of unshaken conviction.

“I know, father; I see what you mean. But don’t you see that even your way wouldn’t be the right way for you if you ceased to believe that it was?”

His father looked at him with mingled bewilderment and reprobation. “Do you mean to say that the fact of goodness depends on my conception of it, and not on God Almighty’s?”

“I do … yes … in a specific sense …” young Draper falteringly maintained; and Mr. Spence turned with a discouraged gesture toward his secretary’s suspended pen.

“I don’t understand your scientific jargon, Draper; and I don’t want to.–What’s the next point, Millner? (No; no savarin. Bring the fruit–and the coffee with it.)”

Millner, keenly aware that an aromatic savarin au rhum was describing an arc behind his head previous to being rushed back to the pantry under young Draper’s indifferent eye, stiffened himself against this last assault of the enemy, and read out firmly: “What relation do you consider that a man’s business conduct should bear to his religious and domestic life?”

Mr. Spence mused a moment. “Why, that’s a stupid question. It goes over the same ground as the other one. A man ought to do good with his money–that’s all. Go on.”

At this point the butler’s murmur in his ear caused him to push back his chair, and to arrest Millner’s interrogatory by a rapid gesture. “Yes; I’m coming. Hold the wire.” Mr. Spence rose and plunged into the adjoining “office,” where a telephone and a Remington divided the attention of a young lady in spectacles who was preparing for Zenana work in the East.

As the door closed, the butler, having placed the coffee and liqueurs on the table, withdrew in the rear of his battalion, and the two young men were left alone beneath the Rembrandts and Hobbemas on the dining-room walls.

There was a moment’s silence between them; then young Spence, leaning across the table, said in the lowered tone of intimacy: “Why do you suppose he dodged that last question?”

Millner, who had rapidly taken an opulent purple fig from the fruit-dish nearest him, paused in surprise in the act of hurrying it to his lips.

“I mean,” Draper hastened on, “the question as to the relation between business and private morality. It’s such an interesting one, and he’s just the person who ought to tackle it.”

Millner, despatching the fig, glanced down at his notes. “I don’t think your father meant to dodge the question.”

Young Draper continued to look at him intently. “You think he imagined that his answer really covers the ground?”

“As much as it needs to be covered.”

The son of the house glanced away with a sigh. “You know things about him that I don’t,” he said wistfully, but without a tinge of resentment in his tone.

“Oh, as to that–(may I give myself some coffee?)” Millner, in his walk around the table to fill his cup, paused a moment to lay an affectionate hand on Draper’s shoulder. “Perhaps I know him better, in a sense: outsiders often get a more accurate focus.”

Draper considered this. “And your idea is that he acts on principles he has never thought of testing or defining?”

Millner looked up quickly, and for an instant their glances crossed. “How do you mean?”

“I mean: that he’s an inconscient instrument of goodness, as it were? A–a sort of blindly beneficent force?”