Young Millner had a healthy appetite, and it was not one of his least sacrifices to be so often obliged to curb it in the interest of his advancement; but whenever he waved aside one of the triumphs of Mr. Spence’s chef he was conscious of rising a step in his employer’s favour.  Mr. Spence did not despise the pleasures of the table, though he appeared to regard them as the reward of success rather than as the alleviation of effort; and it increased his sense of his secretary’s merit to note how keenly the young man enjoyed the fare which he was so frequently obliged to deny himself.  Draper, having subsisted since infancy on a diet of truffles and terrapin, consumed such delicacies with the insensibility of a traveller swallowing a railway sandwich; but Millner never made the mistake of concealing from Mr. Spence his sense of what he was losing when duty constrained him to exchange the fork for the pen.

“My chief aim in life!” Mr. Spence repeated, removing his eye-glass and swinging it thoughtfully on his finger. ("I’m sorry you should miss this souffle, Millner:  it’s worth while.) Why, I suppose I might say that my chief aim in life is to leave the world better than I found it.  Yes:  I don’t know that I could put it better than that.  To leave the world better than I found it.  It wouldn’t be a bad idea to use that as a head-line. ’Wants to leave the world better than he found it.’ It’s exactly the point I should like to make in this talk about the College.”

Mr. Spence paused, and his glance once more reverted to his son, who, having pushed aside his plate, sat watching Millner with a dreamy intensity.

“And it’s the point I want to make with you, too, Draper,” his father continued genially, while he turned over with a critical fork the plump and perfectly matched asparagus which a footman was presenting to his notice.  “I want to make you feel that nothing else counts in comparison with that—­no amount of literary success or intellectual celebrity.”

“Oh, I do feel that,” Draper murmured, with one of his quick blushes, and a glance that wavered between his father and Millner.  The secretary kept his eyes on his notes, and young Spence continued, after a pause:  “Only the thing is—­isn’t it?—­to try and find out just what does make the world better?”

“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.