Again came the desire to let, for once, a strong impulse have its way, to forget, for once, that he was a man under strict discipline—­the discipline of his own cruel will—­or to remember and mutiny.  For a moment his thoughts were almost like a schoolboy’s.  The fun of it!  The fun of rapid packing, of saying to Henry (unboundedly amazed), “Call me a four-wheeler!” of the drive to Charing Cross, of the registering of the luggage, of the rapid flight through the wintry landscape till the grey sea beat up almost against the line, of the—­

And presently Naples!  A blue sea, the mountains of Crete, the iron ridges of Zante, and at last a laughing harbour, boats with bellying lateen sails manned by dark men in turbans, white houses, flat roofs, palm-trees!

It would be good!  It would be splendid!

If he answered Nigel’s letter, he would not yield to his impulse.  And if he did not answer it—?

After long hesitation, he put the letter aside, he got out of a drawer his pile of manuscript paper, and he set himself to work.  And presently he forgot that it was Sunday in London; he forgot everything except what he was doing.  But in the evening, when he was dining alone, the longing to be off returned, and though he said to himself that he would not yield to it, he did not answer Nigel’s letter.  Absurdly, he felt that by not answering it he left the door open to this possible pleasure.

He never answered that letter.  Day after day went by.  He worked with unflagging energy.  He seemed as attentive to, as deeply interested in, his patients as usual.  But all the time that he sat in his consulting-room, that he listened to accounts of symptoms, that he gave advice and wrote out prescriptions, he was secretly playing with the idea that perhaps this spring he would take a holiday in Egypt.  He had an ardent, though generally carefully controlled imagination.  Just now he gave it the reins.  In the darkest days he saw himself in sunlight.  When he looked at the bare trees in the parks, they changed in a moment to opulent palms.  He heard a soft wind stirring their mighty leaves.  It spoke to him of the desert.  Never before had he gained such definite pleasure from his imagination.  Had he become a child again?  It almost seemed so.  If his patients only knew the present truths of the man whom they begged to lead them to health!  If they only knew his wanderings while they were unfolding their tales of wonder and woe!  But his face told nothing.  It did not cry to them, “I am in Egypt!” And so they were never perturbed.

February slipped away.

If he really meant to go to the Nile, he must not delay his departure.  Did he mean to go?  So long now had he played with the delightful imagination of a voyage to the sun that he began to say to himself that he had had his pleasure and must rest satisfied.  He even told himself the commonplace lie that the thought of a thing is more satisfactory than the thing itself could ever be, and that to him the real Egypt would prove a disappointment after the imagined Egypt of his winter dreams.  And he decided that he would not go, that he had never intended to go.