Meanwhile the invitations flowed in. The old staircase of the inn was besieged with callers. In order to escape them, Hands was forced to spend much time in the chambers on the other side of the landing, which belonged to a young barrister, Kennedy by name, who was able to put a spare sitting-room at his disposal. This gentleman, briefless and happy, was somewhat of the Dick Swiveller type, and it gave him intense pleasure to reconnoitre the opposite "oak" through the slit of his letter-box, and to report and speculate upon those who stood knocking for admission. How he loathed it all! The shock and surprise of it was not one of the least distressing features. Far away in the ancient Eastern city he had indeed realised the momentous nature of the strange and awful things he had found. But of the consequences to himself he had thought nothing, and of the effects on the world he had not had time to think. Hands had never wished to be celebrated. His temperament was poetic in essence, retiring in action. He longed to be back under the eye of the sun, to move among the memorials of the past with his Arab boys, to lie upon the beach of the Dead Sea when no airs stirred, and, suddenly, to hear a vast, mysterious breaker, coming from nowhere, with no visible cause, like some great beast crashing through the jungle. And he had exchanged all this for lunches at institutions, for hot rooms full of flowers and fools of women who said, "Oh, _do_ tell me all about your delightful discovery," smiling through their paint while the world's heart was breaking. And there was worse to come. At no distant date he would have to stand upon the platform at the Albert Hall, and Mr. Constantine Schuabe, M.P., Mrs. Hubert Armstrong, the writing woman--the whole crowd of uncongenial people--would hand him a cheque for some preposterous sum of money which he did not in the least want. There would be speeches---- He was not made for this life. His own convictions of Christianity had never been thoroughly formulated or marked out in his brain. All that was mystical in the great history of Christ had always attracted him. He took an æsthetic pleasure in the beautiful story. To him more than to most men it had become a vivid _panoramic_ vision. The background and accessories had been part of his daily life for years. It was as the figure of King Arthur and his old knights might be to some loving student of Malory. And although his life was pure, his actions gentle and blameless, it had always been thus to him--a lovely and poetic picture and no more. He had never made a personal application of it to himself. His heart had never been touched, and he had never heard the Divine Voice calling to him.