Not till he had drunk one glass of “one hundred and eighty” did Mr Barnett fix his eyes upon Mr Burden, and tell him, in a measured manner, with what pleasure he now met, by chance, a gentleman with whom their arrangements were so soon to be made. Having once broken the subtle barrier which separates individuals and races from one another, Mr Barnett manifested himself a moulder and a maker of things in justly ordered sentences, whereby he settled, within a few moments, permitting no interruption, the nature of the syndicate which would be formed, the few to whom any knowledge of it should be confined, and its object in the laying of a foundation for what was to be the development of the M’Korio. Before Mr Burden well knew what had been done, he was pledged to meet his colleagues upon that day week at the Plantagenet Club. His adhesion had been but one disconnected phrase at the close of Mr Barnett’s order of the day: of so urgent a kind is the influence of those who once perhaps led armies, but who are now the captains of greater forces, leading to victories which no soldier of the past could understand. This done, Mr Barnett drank another glass of champagne, and then the best part of a third, in silence, holding the edge of the table with his bent hands, and gazing down. At last he twice pronounced the English word “So,” sighed heavily across the table, rose up, as rise the terrible but majestic pachyderms of the Asiatic continent, smiled once again, bowed, turned to the distant door, shook its lintel with the stately emphasis of his tread, and disappeared in an atmosphere of dignity which nothing marred, save the slight, continuous curve of his back—an accident due to the obesity of his advancing years. The influence of the rare over the more common mind, though by it alone can the purpose of the world be forwarded, is not imposed without friction and occasional pain. Mr Burden suffered from an anarchy of thought, perhaps, more than from a sense of dependence or of peril; yet he suffered, and Cosmo noted that he suffered. When, therefore, his father hinted that he should return with him to Norwood and share another unaccustomed meal, he had the self-control to postpone the pleasure of a dinner he had promised himself among friends in Covent Garden, and to come to the comfort and aid of the parent, of whose old age he had become a kind of guardian and director. Safe back at Avonmore, when they had dined together alone in more than a hour of silence, Mr Burden begged his son, upon whose judgment he had begun to lean with pathetic but insufficient faith, to come a walk with him towards the heights of the hills. They had not gone far in the warm, long evening, before Mr Burden, who had been looking towards the setting sun in silence, spoke out.