His voice became lower; he fixed his eyes meaningly on the other. “When a man’s life got a twist at the start, no wonder it flies off madlike to do the thing that isn’t to be done, and leave undone the thing that’s here for it to do. Doost think a straight line could come from the crooked line you drew for him?” “He is safe--he is well and strong again?” asked the old man painfully. Suddenly he reached out a hand for the paper. “Let me read,” he said, in a voice scarce above a whisper. He essayed to take the paper calmly, but it trembled in his hands. He spread it out and fumbled for his glasses, but could not find them, and he gazed helplessly at the page before him. Soolsby took the paper from him and read slowly: “... Claridge Pasha has done good work in Egypt, but he is a generation too soon, it may be two or three too soon. We can but regard this fresh enterprise as a temptation to Fate to take from our race one of the most promising spirits and vital personalities which this generation has produced. It is a forlorn hope. Most Englishmen familiar with Claridge Pasha’s life and aims will ask--” An exclamation broke from the old man. In the pause which followed he said: “It was none of my doing. He went to Egypt against my will.” “Ay, so many a man’s said that’s not wanted to look his own acts straight in the face. If Our Man had been started different, if he’d started in the path where God A’mighty dropped him, and not in the path Luke Claridge chose, would he have been in Egypt to-day wearing out his life? He’s not making carpets there, he’s only beating them.” The homely illustration drawn from the business in which he had been interested so many years went home to Claridge’s mind. He shrank back, and sat rigid, his brows drawing over the eyes, till they seemed sunk in caverns of the head. Suddenly Soolsby’s voice rose angrily. Luke Claridge seemed so remorseless and unyielding, so set in his vanity and self-will! Soolsby misread the rigid look in the face, the pale sternness. He did not know that there had suddenly come upon Luke Claridge the full consciousness of an agonising truth--that all he had done where David was concerned had been a mistake. The hard look, the sternness, were the signals of a soul challenging itself.