He turned once more to regard the spectacle of the night, and his eye swept over the two edifices that confronted each other immediately above the bridge, the palace, and the hospital; the chosen of the race gathered in the one, its victims in the other, as if civilization were an army whose headquarters and whose ambulance stood side by side. His eye rested long where the road leading down into the dark purlieus of poverty and crime flared and roared like the mouth of sheol; then it returned to the northern side, where the roof of a great mansion was just visible above the trees. What he saw there was the form of a grey-haired woman seated alone, thinking of her prodigal son, perhaps praying for him, perhaps expecting him. He threw one last backward glance towards the city of Ahriman, and then, with a shudder, he set his face towards the gates of Ormuzd, and walked swiftly off the bridge. All the time he had been standing there a prayer had been going up to Heaven: “Give me back my son, O Lord! Give me back my son!” CHAPTER III THE PRODIGAL SON ALISTAIR walked past the lights of Palace Yard, and turned into the broad avenue of Parliament Street, bordered by the vast offices of the British Empire. When he had gone half-way to Charing Cross, he turned aside again, and presently found himself in front of a high and sombre house, one of a row whose windows overlooked the river and the bridge. It stood back in a bleak garden enclosed in tall iron railings, where nothing grew but grass and trees and ivy, all of the same shade of soot-encrusted green. This was Colonsay house, a relic of the days when the Thames had been a glorious highway between the cities of London and Westminster, a highway lined with the dwellings of great nobles, and bright with painted barges and fluttering banners. Now a slight air of decay hung over the old house, and it seemed conscious that it had outlived its generation. The tide no longer washed the foot of its lawn, and rich brocades and jewelled sword-hilts no longer sparkled under its trees. It stood there with its few neighbours, isolated among the encroaching buildings of a newer age, and waiting its own turn to be devoured. Stuart hesitated for a moment as he stood outside the door. There had been a time when he would have walked through that door as of right. But it was long since he had lived under his brother’s roof, and more than a year since he had passed this doorway last. During the time that he had been living in Chelsea he had shunned all intercourse with his family. His mother had written to him more than once, but her letters had remained unanswered. The letters were entreaties to him to abandon the woman who was dragging him down, and he had not abandoned her. He raised his hand to the bell, and jerked it roughly. Then he stood waiting, half ashamed to encounter the gaze of his brother’s servants, and resenting their curiosity in advance.