CHAPTER XVIII. MR BEVAN MAKES A SUGGESTION
When one has been working hard with a single end in view, the arrival and departure of the supreme moment is apt to leave a feeling of emptiness, as if life had been drained of all its interest, and left nothing sufficiently exciting to make it worth doing. Horatius, as he followed his plough on a warm day over the corn land which his gratified country bestowed on him for his masterly handling of the traffic on the bridge, must sometimes have felt it was a little tame. The feeling is far more acute when one has been unexpectedly baulked in one's desire for action. Sheen, for the first few days after he received Drummond's brief note, felt that it was useless for him to try to do anything. The Fates were against him. In stories, as Mr Anstey has
