These and many other thoughts resembling them chased each other through Yeldham's brain, and rendered it difficult to him to keep up even the desultory conversation for which only Streightley was disposed. The friends parted at the railway station, and Yeldham betook himself at once to his chambers. It was a still, hot evening, and the airlessness of the rooms oppressed him. He was a man little influenced by such things ordinarily; yet this evening the grim cheerlessness, the dust, the ungentle disarray, in whose disorderliness there was a kind of order, of which he held the key; the harsh bundles of papers, the very fittings of the rooms, in which all was scrupulously designed for use, and as devoid of ornament as only true British business upholstery knows how to be,--all these things made themselves suddenly apparent. He revolted against them, against his life in general. It suddenly seemed alike hard and useless: what was he grinding away like this for? supposing his object accomplished, _cui bono?_ An unwholesome frame of mind to be betrayed into, even for a little while--a relaxation, a renunciation of the great principle of duty which had upheld and guided him so long; and Charles Yeldham knew that it was so, and felt afraid of himself. He shrank from the first insidious chill of the advancing tide of discontent; he recognised the deadliness of it. "Yes, that's it," he said thoughtfully, when, having emptied his letter-box, and looked over the memoranda left for his inspection by his clerk, he sat moodily by the open window, through which faint sounds from the river reached his ears: "Yes, that's it. I have seen a fine place to-day, and talked with a rich man--a man who hardly knows how rich he really is, I fancy--about what he is to do with his money; and I suppose I am actually envious, cut up by the sight of something desirable that never can be mine. He is going to invest in happiness, is he?--to buy a beautiful idol, and set her up in a splendid shrine? he's rich enough to do it, if he likes. I wonder how it is really. I wonder whether he will be as happy as he believes. But no--I don't wonder any thing of the kind, of course; no one ever was or will be, since life is limited, and faith is infinite. It's a dull business, I fancy, even at the best--as dull perhaps as it is to me, who am so very far off the best."