The act had almost the significance of a ritual, a thing done many times with particular meaning.
"Somehow," Peter said as he fastened it with a pin underneath his lapel, "seventeen years seems a shorter time to look back on than to look forward to." "Well, when we've put twenty-five years of work into it--and that's nothing to what we'll get into the next seventeen." Lessing's tone keyed admirably with the bright ample day outside, the rapid glint of the river and the tips of the maple all a-tremble with the urgency of new growth.

The senior partner's eye roved from that to the restrained richness of the office furniture from which the new was not yet worn, and returned to the contemplation of the towering white cumuli beginning to pile up beyond the farther bank of the river.

"There's no end to what a man can lift," he asserted confidently, "once he's got his feet under him." "We've carried a lot," Peter assented cheerfully, "and sometimes it was rather steep going, but now it's carrying us.

The question is"-- and here his voice fell off a shade and a slight gathering appeared between his eyes--"the real question is, I suppose, what it is carrying us _to_." "Where's the good of that ?" Julian protested.

"It's only a limitation to set out for a particular place.