She did not know how much of her heart, of her being, was wandering over the distant sands of Egypt, looking for its oasis.

Eglington had never needed or wanted more than she had given him--her fortune, her person, her charm, her ability to play an express and definite part in his career.

It was this material use to which she was so largely assigned, almost involuntarily but none the less truly, that had destroyed all of the finer, dearer, more delicate intimacy invading his mind sometimes, more or less vaguely, where Faith was concerned.

So extreme was his egotism that it had never occurred to him, as it had done to the Duchess of Snowdon and Lord Windlehurst, that he might lose Hylda herself as well as her fortune; that the day might come when her high spirit could bear it no longer.

As the Duchess of Snowdon had said: "It would all depend upon the other man, whoever he might be." So he answered her with superficial cheerfulness now; he had not the depth of soul to see that they were at a crisis, and that she could bear no longer the old method of treating her as though she were a child, to be humoured or to be dominated.
"Well, you see all there is," he answered; "you are so imaginative, crying for some moon there never was in any sky." In part he had spoken the truth.