waiting to take up at the police-guarded gate, back there towards the
heat and smoke of London, when the polo match should be played out.

But immediately London, the heat, and smoke, and raucous voice of it,
seemed far enough away, the wholesome charm of the country very present.
For a while Dominic Iglesias yielded himself up to it. Receptive,
quiescent, contented, he basked in the sunshine, his mind vacant of
definite thought. But for a while only. For as physical fatigue wore off,
definite thought returned; and with it the sense of his own loneliness,
the oppression of a future empty of work, the bitterness of this enhanced
by the little disappointment he had lately suffered. He leaned forward,
his hands clasped between his knees, looking at the bracken croziers
pushing bravely upward through the rough turf to air and light. Even
these blind and speechless things worked, in a sense, fulfilling the law
of their existence. He went back on the dream of last night, on his own
childhood, the happiness, yet haunting unspoken anxiety of it, his
father's fanaticism, fierce revolutionary propaganda, and mysteriously
uncertain fate.

"And to think that was the pit out of which I, of all men, was digged!"
he said to himself. "Have I done something to restore the family balance
in respect of right reason, or is the shame of incapacity upon me? Have I
sacrificed myself, or cowardly have I merely shirked living? Heaven
knows--I don't, only----"

But here his uncheerful meditations were broken in on by a voice,
imperative in tone, yet perceptibly shaken by laughter.

"Cappadocia!" it called. "Cappadocia! Do you hear? Come here, you little
reprobate."