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“Sit down, Stacey,” said Mr. Carroll. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, sir,” said the young man, and took the chair at the opposite side of the desk.

There was a brief pause while the two gazed across at each other. Neither could consider the other with cool detached estimation,—years of familiarity were in the way; yet Stacey felt dimly that he was nearer to being outside than he could remember to have been before. He studied his father’s well-shaped head, with its thick gray hair, clipped moustache and firm mouth, in something of the spirit in which, being an architect, he would have studied a building. He saw his father to-day, quite clearly, as a man of tremendous, never wasted energy, and with a warm, generous, unspoiled heart. But it came over Stacey for the first time that the same directness which made his father go so unerringly to the point in business matters, discarding all non-essentials, made him inclined to hold very positive over-simplified opinions about things in general. Whereupon, all in this half-minute of silence, it also occurred to Stacey that business was like mathematics, founded on definite preassumed principles that you were always sure of, whereas those—Stacey supposed they were there—beneath life seemed a trifle wavering and indeterminate.