The longer I live, the more I am conscious of being an object of derision by the scene-shifters in the wings of the stage.

What a cynical comedy life is at the best!" "It all seems natural enough," rejoined David.
"It is all paradox." "Isn't it all inevitable law?
I have no belief in 'antic Fate.'" Hylda realised, with a new and poignant understanding, the difference of outlook on life between the two men.

She suddenly remembered the words of Confucius, which she had set down in her little book of daily life: "By nature we approximate, it is only experience that drives us apart." David would have been content to live in the desert all his life for the sake of a cause, making no calculations as to reward.

Eglington must ever have the counters for the game.
"Well, if you do not believe in 'antic Fate,' you must be greatly puzzled as you go on," he rejoined, laughing; "especially in Egypt, where the East and the West collide, race against race, religion against religion, Oriental mind against Occidental intellect.

You have an unusual quantity of Quaker composure, to see in it all 'inevitable law.' And it must be dull.