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 Education Act had not long been passed, for it was the spring of ’72 when Ishmael began to take an active part in its administration in the West.  He was still a young man, but the happenings and circumstances of his life had made for thoughtfulness, and association with his firebrand brother-in-law was turning that thought into more definite channels than formerly.  Ishmael was becoming less a philosophic dreamer, and he began to feel within himself the stirring of desire to do things.  Not that he had ever been idle, but his own little corner of the world and the definite work he had had to do in it had hitherto filled the practical part of life for him.  Now that Cloom was so far set upon the upward way as to allow him more liberty, bigger though not dearer ideas began to germinate within him.