ought that man is sent into the world to do a
certain work, and that while he is useful for that work he is not likely
to be sent away from it. This was, perhaps, only an effect of
temperament, although he found himself often trying to palm it off on
himself as philosophy.

So he was not troubling himself much about the doubtful nature of the
telegram. Hamilton would come and explain it, and if Hamilton did not
come there would be some other explanation. He began to think about
quite other things--he found himself thinking of the bright eyes and the
friendly, frank, caressing ways of Helena Langley.

The Dictator began somehow to realise the fact that he had hitherto been
leading a very lonely life. He was seldom alone--had seldom been alone
for many years; but he began to understand the difference between not
being alone and being lonely. During all his working career his life had
wanted that companionship which alone is companionship to a man of
sensitive nature. He had been too busy in his time in Gloria to think
about all this. The days had gone by him with a rush. Each day brought
its own sudden and vivid interest. Each day had its own decisions to be
formed, its own plans to be made, its own difficulties to be
encountered, its own struggles to be fought out. Ericson had delighted
in it all, as a splendid exhilarating game. But now, in his enforced
retirement and comparative restlessness, he looked back upon it and
thought how lonely it all was. When each day closed he had no one to
whom he could tell all his thoughts about what the day had done or what
the next day was likely to bring forth. Someone has written about the
'passion of solitude'--not meaning the passion _for_ solitude, the
passion of the saint and the philosopher and the anchorite to be alone
and to commune with outer nature or one's inner thought--no, no, but the
passion _of_ solitude--the raging passion born of solitude which craves
and cries out in agony for the remedy of companionship--of some sweet
and loved and trusted companionship--like the fond and futile longing of
the childless mother for a child.

Eleven! The strokes of the hour rang out from Big Ben in the Clock Tower
of Westminster Palace--the Parliament House of which Ericson, in his
collegiate days, had once made it his ambition to be a member. The sound
of the strokes recalled his mind for the moment to those early days,
when the ambition for a seat in Parliament had been the very