The two friends walked back towards the town in an air shimmering with heat.

The Blue Nile glittered amongst its sand-banks like so many ribands of molten steel.

They were close upon the house before Luttrell answered Stella Croyle's message.
"All _that_," he cried, with a sharp gesture as of a man sweeping something behind him, "all that happened in another age when I was another man." The gesture was violent, but the words were pitiful.

He was not a man exasperated by a woman's unseasonable importunity, but angry with the grim, hard, cruel facts of life.
"It's no good, Martin," he added, with a smile.

"Not all the king's horses nor all the king's men----" Hillyard was sure now that no little line would ever go from Senga to the house in the Bayswater Road.