Impossible! He couldn't go back to Jerusalem in three days, nor in three weeks. His father would be mortally grieved if he did; and Pilate himself would be surprised to see him back so soon and think him lacking altogether in filial affection if, after an absence of more than two years, he could stay only three days with his father. He must, however, send a letter to Pilate and one that consisted with all the circumstances. The barely stirring foliage of the acacia inspired a desire of composition: a more favourable moment than the present, or a more inspiring spot, he did not think he would be likely to find. He called for his tablets and fell to thinking, but hardly filled in the first dozen lines when his foreman--this time apologising for the intrusion--came to tell him that if he wished to reach Magdala that evening they must start at once. He could not but acquiesce, and--as if contemptuous of the protection of his escort--he rode on in front, wishing to be left alone so that he might seek out the terms of his letter, and his mood of irritated perplexity did not pass away till he came within sight of the great upland, rising, however, so gently that he did not think Xerxes would mind ascending it at a gallop. As soon as he reached the last crest, he would see the lake alone, having--thanks to the speed of Xerxes--escaped from his companions for at least five minutes. He looked forward to these moments eagerly yet not altogether absolved from apprehension of a spiritual kind, for the lake always seemed to him a sort of sign, symbol or hieroglyphic, in which he read a warning addressed specially, if not wholly, to himself. The meaning that the lake held out to him always eluded him, and never more completely than now, at the end of an almost windless spring evening.