le
told him.

Soolsby had expected a different attitude; he was not easier in mind
because his story had not been challenged. He blindly felt working in
the man before him a powerful mind, more powerful because it faced the
truth unflinchingly; but he knew that this did not mean calm acceptance
of the consequences. He, not Eglington, was dazed and embarrassed, was
not equal to the situation. He moved uneasily, changed his position.

"Does he know?" Eglington questioned again quietly. There was no need
for Eglington to explain who he was.

"Of course he does not know--I said so. If he knew, do you think he'd be
in Egypt and you here, my lord?"

Eglington was very quiet. His intellect more than his passions were now
at work.

"I am not sure. You never can tell. This might not mean much to him. He
has got his work cut out; he wasn't brought up to this. What he has done
is in line with the life he has lived as a pious Quaker. What good would
it do to bring him back? I have been brought up to it; I am used to it;
I have worked things out 'according to the state of life to which I was
called.' Take what I've always had away from me, and I am crippled; give
him what he never had, and it doesn't work into his scheme. It would
do him no good and me harm--Where's the use? Besides, I am still my
father's son. Don't you see how unreasonable you are? Luke Claridge was
right. He knew that he and his belonged to a different sphere. He didn't
speak. Why do you speak now after all these years when we are all set in
our grooves? It's silly to disturb us, Soolsby."

The voice was low, persuasive, and searching; the mind was working as it
had never worked before, to achieve an end by peaceful means, when war
seemed against him. And all the time he was fascinated by the fact that
Soolsby's hand was within a few inches of a live electric wire, which,
if he touched, would probably complete "the experiment" he had come
to make; and what had been the silence of a generation would continue
indefinitely. It was as though Fate had deliberately tempted him and
arranged the necessary conditions, for Soolsby's feet were in a little
pool of liquid which had been spilled on the floor--the experiment was
exact and real.

For minutes he had watched Soolsby's hand near the wire-had watched as
he talked, and his talk was his argument for non-interference against
warning the man who had come to destroy him and his career. Why had Fate
placed that h