Tremayne. "He's a big man locally, and from a business point of view, I suppose he is a magnate. However, you'll be able to judge for yourself."

    Malcolm Hay went out into the teeming streets of London, walking on air. It was his first appointment—he was earning money, and it seemed rather like a high-class dream.

    In Maida Vale there are many little side streets, composed of shabby houses covered with discoloured stucco, made all the more desolate and gloomy in appearance by the long and narrow strip of "garden" which runs out to the street. In one of these, devoted to the business of a boarding-house, an old man sat at a portable bench, under the one electric light which the economical landlady had allowed him. The room was furnished in a typically boarding-house style.

    But both the worker at the bench, and the woman who sat by the table, her chin on her palms, watching him, seemed unaffected by the poverty of their surroundings. The man was thin and bent of back. As he crouched over the bench, working with the fine tools on what was evidently intended to be the leather cover of a book, his face lay in the shadow, and only the end of his straggling white beard betrayed his age.

    Presently he looked up at the woman and revealed himself as a hawk-nosed man of sixty. His face was emaciated and seamed, and his dark eyes shone brightly. His companion was a woman of twenty-four, obviously of the Jewish type, as was the old man; what good looks she possessed were marred by the sneer on her lips.

    "If these English people see you at work," she said presently, "they will think you are some poor man, little father."

    Israel Kensky did not stop his work.

    "What book are you binding?" she asked after awhile. "Is it the Talmud which Levi Leviski gave you?"

    The old man did not answer, and a dark frown gathered on the woman's heavy face. You might not guess that they were father and daughter, yet such was the case. But between Sophia Kensky and her father there was neither communion of spirit nor friendship. It was amazing that she should accompany him, as she did, wherever he went, or that he should be content to have her as his companion. The gossips of Kieff had it that neither would trust the other out of sight; and it may be that there was something in this, though a stronger motive might be suspected in so far as Sophia's actions were concerned.

    Presently the old man put down his tools, blinked, and pushed back his chair.

    "It is a design for a great book," he said, and chuckled hoarsely. "A book with steel covers and wonderful pages." He smiled contemptuously. "The Book of All-Power," he said.

    "Little father, there are times when I think you are mad. For how can you know the secrets which are denied to others? And you who write so badly, how can you fill a great book with your writings?"

    "The Book of All-Power," repeated the man, and the smile on the woman's face grew broader.

    "A wonderful book!" she scoffed, "filled with magic and mystery and spells—do you wonder that we of Kieff suspect you?"

    "We of Kieff?" he repeated mockingly, and she nodded.

    "We of Kieff," she said.

    "So you are with the rabble, Sophia!" He lifted one shoulder in a contemptuous little gesture.

    "You are also of the rabble, Israel Kensky," she said. "Do you take your dinner in the Grand Duke's palace?"

    He was gathering together the tools on the table, and methodically fitting each graver into a big leather purse.

    "The Grand Duke does not stone me in the street, nor set fire to my houses," he said.

    "Nor the Grand Duchess," said the girl meaningly, and he looked at her from under his lowered brows.

    "The Grand Duchess is beyond the understanding of such as you," he said harshly, and the woman laughed.

    "There will come a day when she will be on her knees to me," she said prophetically, and she got up from the table with a heavy yawn. "That I promise myself, and with this promise I put myself to sleep every night."

    She went on and she spoke without heat.

    "I see her sweeping my floors and eating the bread I throw to her."

    Israel Kensky had heard all this before, and did not even smile.

    "You are an evil woman, Sophia," he said. "God knows how such a one could be a daughter of mine. What has the Grand Duchess done to you that you should harbour such venom?"

    "I hate her because she is," said the woman evenly. "I hate her not for the harm she has done me, but for the proud smile she gives to her slaves. I hate her because she is high and I am low, and because all the time she is marking the difference between us."

    "You are a fool," said Israel Kensky as he left the room.

    "Perhaps I am," said the woman, his daughter. "Are you going to bed now?"

    He turned in the doorway.

    "I am going to my room. I shall not come down again," he said.

    "Then I will sleep," she yawned prodigiously. "I hate this town."

    "Why did you come?" he asked. "I did not want you."

    "I came because you did not want me," said Sophia Kensky.

    Israel went to his room, closed the door and locked it. He listened and presently he heard the sound of his daughter's door close also and heard the snap of the key as it turned. But it was a double snap, and he knew that the sound was intended for him and that the second click was the unlocking of the door.