"These are critical days there.

The problems are worthy of your care.

Will you not come ?" Eglington was conscious of a peculiar persuasive influence over himself that he had never felt before.

In proportion, however, as he felt its compelling quality, there came a jealousy of the man who was its cause.
The old antagonism, which had had its sharpest expression the last time they had met on the platform at Heddington, came back.

It was one strong will resenting another--as though there was not room enough in the wide world of being for these two atoms of life, sparks from the ceaseless wheel, one making a little brighter flash than the other for the moment, and then presently darkness, and the whirring wheel which threw them off, throwing off millions of others again.
On the moment Eglington had a temptation to say something with an edge, which would show David that his success in Egypt hung upon the course that he himself and the weak Foreign Minister, under whom he served, would take.