Mammon.  My Proprietor, good fellow, allows me to cultivate my plot amid the wilderness for other purposes than those of quick returns.  If he were to become a competitor with the Carletons and the Bloomfields, he would have to look upon it as a business proposition.  The Devil would take him up on to the high mountain, and point out to him the kingdom of huge circulations and vast profits, whispering to him:  ’All this will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’  I don’t want the dear good fellow to be tempted.”

“Is it impossible, then, to combine duty and success?” questioned Joan.

“The combination sometimes happens, by chance,” admitted Greyson.  “But it’s dangerous to seek it.  It is so easy to persuade ourselves that it’s our duty to succeed.”

“But we must succeed to be of use,” urged Mary.  “Must God’s servants always remain powerless?”

“Powerless to rule.  Powerful only to serve,” he answered.  “Powerful as Christ was powerful; not as Caesar was powerful—­powerful as those who have suffered and have failed, leaders of forlorn hopes—­powerful as those who have struggled on, despised and vilified; not as those of whom all men speak well—­powerful as those who have fought lone battles and have died, not knowing their own victory.  It is those that serve, not those that rule, shall conquer.”

Joan had never known him quite so serious.  Generally there was a touch of irony in his talk, a suggestion of aloofness that had often irritated her.

“I wish you would always be yourself, as you are now,” she said, “and never pose.”

“Do I pose?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“That shows how far it has gone,” she told him, “that you don’t even know it.  You pretend to be a philosopher.  But you’re really a man.”

He laughed.  “It isn’t always a pose,” he explained.  “It’s some men’s way of saying:  Thy will be done.”

“Ask Phillips to come and see me,” he said.  “I can be of more help, if I know exactly his views.”

He walked with her to the bus.  They passed a corner house that he had more than once pointed out to her.  It had belonged, years ago, to a well-known artist, who had worked out a wonderful scheme of decoration in the drawing-room.  A board was up, announcing that the house was for sale.  A gas lamp, exactly opposite, threw a flood of light upon the huge white lettering.

Joan stopped.  “Why, it’s the house you are always talking about,” she said.  “Are you thinking of taking it?”

“I did go over it,” he answered.  “But it would be rather absurd for just Mary and me.”

She looked up Phillips at the House, and gave him Greyson’s message.  He had just returned from Folkestone, and was worried.

“She was so much better last week,” he explained.  “But it never lasts.”

“Poor old girl!” he added.  “I believe she’d have been happier if I’d always remained plain Bob Phillips.”