Flinch, and the Road runs straight to the Hindu Kush.

You will have your desire; but you will have failed." There was something implacable and relentless in the tone and the words.
There was more, too.

There was an intimation, subtly yet most clearly conveyed, that Ralston who spoke had in his day trampled his ambitions and desires beneath his feet in service to the Government, and asked no more now from Linforth than he himself had in his turn performed.

"I, too, have lived in Arcady," he added.

It twas this last intimation which subdued the protests in Linforth's mind.