He was a busy man making the best and the most of the rewards which the years brought to him, and slamming the door each day upon the day which had gone before.

He made his life in the intellectual exercise of his profession and his membership of the House of Commons.

Upon the deeps of the emotions he had closed a lid.

Yet he had set out with a vague reluctance to Little Beeding; and once his motor-car had passed Hindhead and dipped to the weald of Sussex the reluctance had grown to a definite regret that he should once more have come into this country.

His recollections were of a dim far-off time, so dim that he could hardly believe that he had any very close relation with the young struggling man who had spent his first real holiday there.