He thought of all this as he sat in his room at the Foreign Office and looked over St. James’s Park, his day’s work done. He was suddenly seized by a new-born anxiety, for he had been so long used to the open purse and the unchecked stream of gold, had taken it so much as a matter of course, as not to realise the possibility of its being withdrawn. He was conscious of a kind of meanness and ugly sordidness in the suggestion; but the stake--his future, his career, his position in the world--was too high to allow him to be too chivalrous. His sense of the real facts was perverted. He said to himself that he must be practical. Moved by the new thought, he seized a time-table and looked up the trains. He had been ten days in town, receiving every morning a little note from Hylda telling of what she had done each day; a calm, dutiful note, written without pretence, and out of a womanly affection with which she surrounded the man who, it seemed once--such a little while ago--must be all in all to her. She had no element of pretence in her. What she could give she gave freely, and it was just what it appeared to be. He had taken it all as his due, with an underlying belief that, if he chose to make love to her again, he could blind her to all else in the world. Hurt vanity and egotism and jealousy had prevented him from luring her back to that fine atmosphere in which he had hypnotised her so few years ago. But suddenly, as he watched the swans swimming in the pond below, a new sense of approaching loss, all that Hylda had meant in his march and progress, came upon him; and he hastened to return to Hamley. Getting out of the train at Heddington, he made up his mind to walk home by the road that David had taken on his return from Egypt, and he left word at the station that he would send for his luggage. His first objective was Soolsby’s hut, and, long before he reached it, darkness had fallen. From a light shining through the crack of the blind he knew that Soolsby was at home. He opened the door and entered without knocking. Soolsby was seated at a table, a map and a newspaper spread out before him. Egypt and David, always David and Egypt! Soolsby got to his feet slowly, his eyes fixed inquiringly on his visitor. “I didn’t knock,” said Eglington, taking off his greatcoat and reaching for a chair; then added, as he seated himself: “Better sit down, Soolsby.” After a moment he continued: “Do you mind my smoking?” Soolsby did not reply, but sat down again. He watched Eglington light a cigar and stretch out his hands to the wood fire with an air of comfort. A silence followed. Eglington appeared to forget the other’s presence, and to occupy himself with thoughts that glimmered in the fire. At last Soolsby said moodily: “What have you come for, my lord?” “Oh, I am my lord still, am I?” Eglington returned lazily. “Is it a genealogical tree you are studying there?” He pointed to the map.