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At a time of year when the indolent languors of an exceptionally warm summer disinclined most people for continuous hard work, and when those who could afford it had left their ordinary avocations for the joys of a long holiday, I received a pressing invitation from certain persons whom I had met by chance during one London season, to join them in a yachting cruise. My intending host was an exceedingly rich man, a widower with one daughter, a delicate and ailing creature who, had she been poor, would have been irreverently styled 'a tiresome old maid,' but who by reason of being a millionaire's sole heiress was alluded to with sycophantic tenderness by all and sundry as 'Poor Miss Catherine.' Morton Harland, her father, was in a certain sense notorious for having written and published a bitter, cold and pitiless attack on religion, which was the favourite reading of many scholars and literary men, and this notable performance, together with the well accredited reports of his almost fabulous wealth, secured for him two social sets,—the one composed of such human sharks as are accustomed to swim round the plutocrat,—the other of the cynical, listless, semi-bored portion of a so-called cultured class who, having grown utterly tired of themselves, presumed that it was clever to be equally tired of God. I was surprised that such a man as he was should think of including me among his guests, for I had scarcely exchanged a dozen words with him, and my acquaintance with Miss Harland was restricted to a few casual condolences with her respecting the state of her health. Yet it so chanced that one of those vague impulses to which we can give no name, but which often play an important part in the building up of our life-dramas, moved both father and daughter to a wish for my company. Moreover, the wish was so strong that though on first receiving their invitation I had refused it, they repeated it urgently, Morton Harland himself pressing it upon me with an almost imperative insistence.
"You want rest,"—he said, peering at me narrowly with his small hard brown eyes—"You work all the time. And to what purpose?"
I smiled.
"To as much purpose as anyone else, I suppose,"—I answered—"But to put it plainly, I work because I love work."
The lines of his mouth grew harder.
"So did I love work when I was your age,"—he said—"I thought I could carve out a destiny. So I could. I have done it. But now it's done I'm tired! I'm sick of my destiny,—the thing I carved out so cleverly,—it has the stone face of a Sphinx and its eyes are blank and without meaning."
I was silent. My silence seemed to irritate him, and he gave me a sharp, enquiring glance.
"Do you hear me?" he demanded—"If you do, I don't believe you understand!"
"I hear—and I quite understand,"—I replied, quietly, "Your destiny, as you have made it, is that of a rich man. And you do not care about it. I think that's quite natural."