He had left these quiet scenes inexperienced and untravelled, to be thrust suddenly into the thick of a struggle of nations over a sick land.

He had worked in a vortex of debilitating local intrigue.

All who had to do with Egypt gained except herself, and if she moved in revolt or agony, they threatened her.
Once when resisting the pressure and the threats of war of a foreign diplomatist, he had, after a trying hour, written to Faith in a burst of passionate complaint, and his letter had ended with these words.
"In your onward march, O men, White of face, in promise whiter, You unsheath the sword, and then Blame the wronged as the fighter.
"Time, ah, Time, rolls onward o'er All these foetid fields of evil, While hard at the nation's core Eats the burning rust and weevill "Nathless, out beyond the stars Reigns the Wiser and the Stronger, Seeing in all strifes and wars Who the wronged, who the wronger." Privately he had spoken thus, but before the world he had given way to no impulse, in silence finding safety from the temptation to diplomatic evasion.

Looking back over five years, he felt now that the sum of his accomplishment had been small.
He did not realise the truth.

When his hand was almost upon the object for which he had toiled and striven--whether pacifying a tribe, meeting a loan by honest means, building a barrage, irrigating the land, financing a new industry, or experimenting in cotton--it suddenly eluded him.