All these things he saw with his mental eyes, but with his mental eyes only, for his physical gaze was fixed ahead where the Houses of Parliament loomed out of the dusk.  From the great building his eyes never wavered until the Embankment was traversed and Westminster Bridge reached.  Then he paused, resting his arms on the coping of the bridge.

In the tense quietude of the darkness the place looked vast and inspiring.  The shadowy Terrace, the silent river, the rows of lighted windows, each was significant.  Slowly and comprehensively his glance passed from one to the other.  He was no sentimentalist and no dreamer; his act was simply the act of a man whose interests, robbed of their natural outlet, turn instinctively towards the forms and symbols of the work that is denied them.  His scrutiny was steady—­even cold.  He was raised to no exaltation by the vastness of the building, nor was he chilled by any dwarfing of himself.  He looked at it long and thoughtfully; then, again moving slowly, he turned and retraced his steps.

His mind was full as he walked back, still oblivious of the stone parapet of the Embankment, the bare trees, and the flaring lights of the advertisements across the water.  Turning to the left, he regained Fleet Street and made for his own habitation with the quiet accuracy that some men exhibit in moments of absorption.

He crossed Clifford’s Inn with the same slow, almost listless step; then, as his own doorway came into view, he stopped.  Some one was standing in its recess.

For a moment he wondered if his fancy were playing him a trick; then his reason sprang to certainty with so fierce a leap that for an instant his mind recoiled.  For we more often stand aghast at the strength of our own feelings than before the enormity of our neighbor’s actions.

“Is that you, Chilcote?” he said, below his breath.

At the sound of his voice the other wheeled round.  “Hallo!” he said.  “I thought you were the ghost of some old inhabitant.  I suppose I am very unexpected?”

Loder took the hand that he extended and pressed the fingers unconsciously.  The sight of this man was like the finding of an oasis at the point where the desert is sandiest, deadliest, most unbearable.

“Yes, you are—­unexpected,” he answered.

Chilcote looked at him, then looked out into the court.  “I’m done up,” he said.  “I’m right at the end of the tether.”  He laughed as he said it, but in the dim light of the hall Loder thought his face looked ill and harassed despite the flush that the excitement of the meeting had brought to it.  Taking his arm, he drew him towards the stairs.

“So the rope has run out, eh?” he said, in imitation of the other’s tone.  But under the quiet of his manner his own nerves were throbbing with the peculiar alertness of anticipation; a sudden sense of mastery over life, that lifted him above surroundings and above persons—­a sense of stature, mental and physical, from which he surveyed the world.  He felt as if fate, in the moment of utter darkness, had given him a sign.