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Updated: May 23, 2025
The realization of this and a slow incredulity at Chilcote's voluntary renunciation were his first impressions; then his attention was needed for more imminent things. As he entered, the new secretary was returning a volume to its place on the book-shelves. At sight of him, he pushed it hastily into position and turned round.
Thus he encountered and overpassed the obstacle that had so nearly threatened ruin; and, with the singleness of purpose that always distinguished him, he was able, once having passed it, to dismiss it altogether from his mind. From the moment of his return to Chilcote's house no misgiving as to his own action, no shadow of doubt, rose to trouble his mind.
His entrance into Chilcote's surroundings had been altogether different. Unknown to himself, he had been in the position of a young artist who, having roughly modelled in clay, is brought into the studio of a sculptor. To his outward vision everything is new, but his inner sight leaps to instant understanding.
He was not a man over whom imagination held any powerful sway his doubts and misgivings seldom ran to speculation, upon future possibilities; nevertheless, the fact that, consciously or unconsciously, he had adopted a new attitude towards Eve came home to him with unpleasant force during the hours of darkness; and long before the first hint of daylight had slipped through the heavy window-curtains he had arranged a plan of action a plan wherein, by the simple method of altogether avoiding her, he might soothe his own conscience and safeguard Chilcote's domestic interests.
Opposition is the whip to action; a too-ready acquiescence the slackened rein. "Did I say that?" he asked, quickly. The tone was almost Chilcote's. She glanced up; then a sudden, incomprehensible smile lighted up her face. "You didn't say, but you thought," she answered, gravely. "Thoughts are the same as words to a woman. That's why we are so unreasonable." Again she smiled.
His steps were quick and uneven as he traversed the intervening streets; his shoulders lacked their decisive pose, and his pale face was marked with shadows beneath the eyes shadows that bore witness to the sleepless night spent in pacing Chilcote's vast and lonely room.
"Oh, that's ancient history." "The results are present-day enough. It's very awkward! Very annoying!" Chilcote's spirits, at all times overeasily played upon, were damped by this obstacle. Loder, still looking at his hand, didn't seem to hear. "There's only one thing to be done," he said. "Each wear two rings on the third finger of the left hand. Two rings ought to cover it."
At the sound of the low, rather formal tones, so characteristic of the old statesman, a hundred memories rose to Chilcote's mind, a hundred hours, distasteful in the living and unbearable in the recollection; and with them the new flash of hope, the new possibility of freedom. In a sudden rush of confidence he turned to his leader. "I believe I've found a remedy for my nerves," he said.
Seated at Chilcote's table, surrounded by Chilcote's letters and papers, he forgot the breakfast that was slowly growing cold, forgot the interests and dangers, personal or pleasurable, of the night before, while his mental eyes persistently conjured up the map of Persia, travelling with steady deliberation from Merv to Meshed, from Meshed to Herat, from Herat to the empire of India!
But vastly keener issues were claiming his attention, issues whose results were wide and black. He left the theatre, and, refusing the overtures of cabmen, set himself to walk to Chilcote's house. His face was hard and emotionless as he hurried forward, but the chaos in his mind found expression in the unevenness of his pace.
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