Even a madman may become monotonous when we live with him, day in, day out, for seven long years; and gradually the attitude of John's mind had changed with the passage of time.

The sense of adventure and triumphant enterprise had steadily receded; the knowledge that he was working out a slow, distasteful probation had advanced.

Reluctantly and yet definitely he had realized that his position was not to come and conquer, but to watch and wait; and this consciousness of a tacitly expected end had grown with the years--with the growth of his mind and body.

It was not that he was hard-natured.

The regularity with which he despatched his yearly money to his mother--reserving the merest fraction for himself--precluded that idea.