He stayed away, after this, for a year; he visited the depths of Asia, spending himself on scenes of romantic interest, of superlative sanctity; but what was present to him everywhere was that for a man who had known what he had known the world was vulgar and vain.  The state of mind in which he had lived for so many years shone out to him, in reflexion, as a light that coloured and refined, a light beside which the glow of the East was garish¹ cheap and thin.  The terrible truth was that he had lost—with everything else—a distinction as well; the things he saw couldn’t help being common when he had become common to look at them.  He was simply now one of them himself—he was in the dust, without a peg² for the sense of difference; and there were hours when, before the temples of gods and the sepulchres of kings, his spirit turned for nobleness of association to the barely discriminated³ slab⁴ in the London suburb.  That had become for him, and more intensely with time and distance, his one witness of a past glory.  It was all that was left to him for proof or pride, yet the past glories of Pharaohs were nothing to him as he thought of it.  Small wonder then that he came back to it on the morrow of his return.  He was drawn⁵ there this time as irresistibly⁶ as the other, yet with a confidence, almost, that was doubtless the effect of the many months that had elapsed.  He had lived, in spite of himself, into his change of feeling, and in wandering over the earth had wandered, as might be said, from the circumference⁷ to the centre of his desert.  He had settled to his safety and accepted perforce his extinction⁸; figuring to himself, with some colour, in the likeness

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