And his eye roved along the serrated contours of the
mainland, its undulating shore-line, its distant peaks throbbing in the
sunset glow; they rested upon many villages, coral-tinted specks of
light, so far away they seemed to belong to another world. It was a
pleasure to breathe on these aerial heights, surrounded by sky and sea;
to survey the world as a bird might survey it. Like floating in air. .
. .
He sat and smoked and pondered. He tried to get himself into
perspective. "I must straighten myself out," he thought. Assuredly it
was a restful place, this Nepenthe, abounding in kindly people; his
affection for it grew with every day. Rest without; but where was that
old rest within, that sense of plain tasks plainly to be performed, of
tangible duty? Whither had it gone? Alien influences were at work upon
him. Something new had insinuated itself into his blood, some demon of
doubt and disquiet which threatened his old-established conceptions.
Whence came it? The effect of changed environment--new friends, new
food, new habits? The unaccustomed leisure which gave him, for the
first time, a chance of thinking about non-professional matters? The
south wind acting on his still weakened health? All these together? Or
had he reached an epoch in his development, the termination of one of
those definite life--periods when all men worthy of the name pass
through some cleansing process of spiritual desquamation, and slip
their outworn weeds of thought and feeling?
Whatever it was he seemed to be no longer his own master, as in former
days.
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