A wave of bitter laughter began to rise in his own heart; but something warned him, if he laughed just then, he would go mad. He clutched at his leaping nerves as a man might clutch the reins of a runaway horse. All at once he attained complete sad composure. He was walking on a bleak high tableland among the stars, from which he looked down, and saw the world and all that was therein as a very little thing. Honour, dishonour, wealth, poverty--all were alike trifles, the blowing up and down of a little dust.... "_As a ship that passeth over the waves of the water, which, when it is gone by, the trace thereof cannot be found._" He was quite calm now. He turned toward the man, who still stood with his inscrutable quiet smile, unavoidable as destiny, watching him narrowly. "I will go with you," he said. "I give you my word, I will go quietly." XX THE RETURN Through the soft summer seas the great ship moved into the mouth of the English Channel. The early dawn had revealed the faint mist-folded promontories of the Cornish coast well to westward. Red-sailed fishing-boats hung like a flight of birds upon the lucid floors of ocean; coasting steamers snorted past with an air of insular importance; here and there a white-sailed brig glimmered in the early sunlight; and, coming after the long loneliness of open seas, these signs of life impressed the mind like the stir and tumult of a city. Plymouth would be reached by noon. Letters, telegrams, and papers had already come aboard with the pilot--the first friendly overtures of a land slowly rising out of the thinning morning bank. Men and women, with laughing eyes and gladdened faces, stood in little groups reading their correspondence, exchanging jests, commenting upon scraps of news which they had gathered from the papers. It seemed the tide of war had turned at last. It was to a madly joyous land the great ship made its slow approach. Suddenly upon the deck the band clashed with the animating music of the National Anthem. The English stood uncovered as the first familiar bar vibrated on the quiet air; the Americans watched them with a half-sympathetic amusement; even the steerage passengers, foreigners for the most part, without part or lot in British victories, smiled cheerfully. So joyous was the hour that private grief appeared a contradiction, an impertinence. There was neither telegram nor letter for Arthur, and he had been unable to secure a paper. To him England extended no welcome.