The two women looked at each other with a smile of comprehension asthe old, old man who, considering his years, was still so amazinglyactive, rose restlessly from his arm-chair to go to the northernmostwindow of the enormous hall in which they were sitting and to look,over the west end of the dark lake, at the mill. He did this nightafter night now; but there had been years when he had carefullyavoided that view.All three were in evening clothes; it was the custom to dress fordinner, at the great house on the shelf of the hillside overlookingthe two arms of the lake. The women were busy with embroidery; itwas rare that either of them spoke on these long evenings afterthey had risen from table; and if there was occasion for anexchange of words, they were uttered under their breath.The younger of the two, Lady Clark or Maud, as she was called byher intimates was the old man's daughter-in-law. Though she wasstill in her early forties, she had, to all appearance, at leastfor an outsider, only one aim left in life, namely to ease the oldman's lapse into that senility which had to come at last, long asit had been staved off by her husband's unexpected death more thana decade ago. The older woman, Miss Charlebois, had once been the'companion' of Mrs Samuel Clark, the long-dead wife of the old man,a senator of Canada, who had gone to the window whence he looked atthe mill as if he must watch that nobody walked off with it.Life in the house, as was natural in a place which stood aside fromthe main stream of life, followed a strict routine; and even LadyClark lived largely in the past, perhaps for the very reason that,as far as the mill went, the future was hers; she was its largestshareholder; and there was now only one other, the old man who hadcertainly long since made her his heir.Yet it was doubtful whether either of the women realized what wenton in the old man as he looked at that mill which towered up,seventeen stories high, at the foot of the lake, like a hugepyramid whose truncated apex was in line with the summits of thesurrounding hills. The mill which, in a physical sense, he hadlargely created had been his love before he had owned it; it hadbecome the object of his hatred after it had become his; it hadalways ruled his destiny; it had been, it still was, the centralfact in his life; it had never permitted him to be entirelyhimself; it had determined his every action. The history of themill had been his history, beginning with the time when his fatherhad started to build it; and again beyond the time when his son,having done something to it of which he himself disapproved, waskilled by the stray shot of a striker. Whatever had happened tohim, in his inner as well as his outer life, had been contingentupon its existence. His father had forced it on him; his son hadthrown it back on his shoulders. It had led a life of its own,more potent, more decisive than the life of any mere human being.The individual destinies connected with it had merely wovenarabesques around it. But, perhaps naturally, it was these livingarabesques which held the old man's thought.