It seemed to him that he was in the land to which he belonged, the barren land of desolation and failure.

The triumphs of the past failed for a moment to thrill his pulses.

The memory of his well-lived and successful life brought him not an atom of consolation.

The present was all that mattered, and the present had brought him to the gates of failure .-- After all, what did a man work for, he wondered?
What was the end and aim of it all?
Life at Martinhoe Manor, with a faithful but terrified manservant, bookshelves ready to afford him the phantasmal satisfaction of another man's thoughts, sea and winds, beauties of landscape and colour, to bring him to the threshold of an epicurean pleasure which needed yet that one pulsating link with humanity to yield the full meed of joy and content.
It all came back to the old story of man's weakness, he thought, as he rose to his feet, his teeth almost savagely clenching his pipe.

He had become a conqueror of circumstances only to become a victim of the primitive needs of life.
At about a quarter of a mile from the house, the road branched away to the left to disappear suddenly over the edge of a drop of many hundreds of feet.