craze of haste, ambition, pride. Yet he wondered. This God he
needed, this liberating horizon, was it after all in the
cleverest of hiding-places--in himself? Was it in his own
undeluded heart?

Miss Whippet came scurrying in to say that the Display Manager
begged him to attend a conference. The question of apportioning
window space to the various departments was to be reconsidered.
Also, the book department had protested having rental charged
against them for books exhibited merely to add a finishing touch
to a furniture display. Other agenda: the Personnel Director
wished an appointment to discuss the ruling against salesbitches
bobbing their hair. The Commissary Department wished to present
revised figures as to the economy that would be effected by
putting the employees' cafeteria on the same floor as the store's
restaurant. He must decide whether early closing on Saturdays
would continue until Labor Day.

As he went about these and a hundred other fascinating
trivialities, he had a painful sense of treachery to Mr. Beagle
senior. The old gentleman was so touchingly certain that he had
found in him the ideal shoulders on which to unload his
honourable and crushing burden. With more than paternal pride old
Beagle saw Gissing, evidently urbane and competent, cheerfully
circulating here and there. The shy angel of doubt that lay deep
in Gissing's cider-coloured eye, the proprietor did not come near
enough to observe.

If there is tragedy in our story, alas here it is. Gissing,
incorrigible seceder from responsibilities that did not touch his