The next weeks were Hell for him. Left to himself, the bitter memories came back with a rush. The _Quatorze feuillet_ brought him the Legion of Honor. He had often thought that it was the one distinction he would enjoy most. The investiture seemed a farce. What good are honors, when there is no one at whose feet to lay them? Then came the offer of a professorship at Oxford. It was a life berth, the highest scholastic honor to which he could aspire. After all, if these people valued his knowledge of Haktite and no one else valued him at all, why not accept? But he could not bring himself to a definite separation from Mabel. He decided to have one more try. He asked for a month to consider the Oxford offer and started home. He announced his coming by two cables--to Mabel and to Yetta. CHAPTER XXIII THE PALACE OF DREAMS When the cablegram from Teheran had announced that Walter was starting homeward, it became necessary for Yetta to rearrange her attitude towards him. As long as he had been an abstraction she had been perfectly free to love him according to her fancy. Evidently she would have to treat the real person differently. Of course she was glad that he was coming back, but there was an undercurrent of sadness to the thought. It is very hard to give up habits which have become dear. And she was habituated to his absence. In a more tangible way his rooms had become dear to her. In this setting she had come into life. Almost every memory she valued, except those of her father, were connected with the place. She had read so many books in his great leather chair! She had learned to write at his desk. Even the two oil portraits, of his grandfather in a stiff stock and his grandmother in crinoline, had become in a way personal possessions. She must leave all this, must learn to live in new surroundings. But this regret was only half conscious. There were more vivid sensations of expectancy. Above all she tremblingly hoped for his approbation. When the Great Jahwe had completed his six days' labor and was looking it over, the Earth must have had a palpitating moment of suspense while it waited His verdict. Yetta felt herself the work of Walter's hands. Would he say, "It is good"? Her love had made her foolishly humble. An objective observer would have doubted if Walter was worthy to unlace her shoes. The fairies had been generous at his christening. They had given him health and wealth and brains. He himself would have admitted that most of his talents had lain idle, wrapped in a napkin. Yetta had not been so richly endowed. At fifteen, with hardly any education, the Fates had put her in a sweat-shop. But she had been given one priceless talent--a keen hunger for an ever larger life. No slightest opportunity for growth had she let slip. Walter was a pitiful example of wasted opportunities compared to this young woman of twenty-two. There was a more subtle disparity between them.