On Tuesday, the 2nd, was the speech to the General Meeting of Van Diemens. He glanced at his notes for that speech; they were all in excellent sequence, and he felt, so far as men of that stern temper can feel it, a little touch of pride when he noted the procession of the argument. He saw in his mind’s eye first the conviction and then the enthusiasm of the men whom he must convince: the vivid portrayal of the Empire’s need of the railway: the ease of building it,--the delivery of the great metaphor wherein he compared that thin new line of iron to the electrical connection which turns potential and useless electrical energy into actual and working force. He re-read the phrase in which he called it “completing the circuit”; he did not doubt at all that the meeting would follow him. Sentence after sentence passed before his memory (for he had carefully learned the peroration by heart); the name of Nelson shone in one of them, the name of Rhodes in another, of Joel in a third, till the great oration closed with a vision, brief, succinct (but how vivid!) of the Gate of the East and of England’s hand upon it, holding “... the keys Of such teeming destinies” through them: through them! It was a great speech. He turned more carelessly to the already typewritten stuff which he must deliver upon the Thursday to the Wycliffite Conference. It would do--and it was of importance for the moment. It reminded him a little contemptuously of the High Meat Teas in the North of England and of his youth, and of that maundering war between Church and Chapel which was then of real moment to him, and which now he still had wearily to wage,--at least in public. Whether this little bout of study had been too much for a man who had already spent a full month glued to his work, or whatever else was the cause, he felt as midnight approached a trifle brain-sick. He leant his head upon his hand, and it seemed to him--he hoped it was an illusion for the sensation was yet vague--but it _did_ seem to him that the pain behind the ears, or at least an oppression there, was beginning. He muttered an exclamation so sharp as would have astonished those who had never seen him under a strain. Then he went quickly upstairs to the drawing-room and found his wife, sitting all alone with her book. She looked up as he entered, and again she was startled by that strange innocence in his eyes. Odd, (but what living!) flashes of thirty, of forty years ago pierced her heart. Youth goes down every lane, and these two, just after their marriage, just before the first loan he had made, had been, for a month or so, young: the memory of it was a jewel to her.