ears heard a thousand small outcries contributing to the awful
energy of the world--faint chimings and whistlings in the grass,
and endless flutter, rustle, and whirr. His own body, on which
hair and nails grew daily like vegetation, startled and appalled
him. Consciousness of self, that miserable ecstasy, was heavy
upon him.

He envied the children, who lay upstairs sprawled under their
mosquito nettings. Immersed in living, how happily unaware of
being alive! He saw, with tenderness, how naively they looked to
him as the answer and solution of their mimic problems. But where
could he find someone to be to him what he was to them? The truth
apparently was that in his inward mind he was desperately lonely.
Reading the poets by fits and starts, he suddenly realized that
in their divine pages moved something of this loneliness, this
exquisite unhappiness. But these great hearts had had the
consolation of setting down their moods in beautiful words, words
that lived and spoke. His own strange fever burned inexpressibly
inside him. Was he the only one who felt the challenge offered by
the maddening fertility and foison of the hot sun-dazzled earth?
Life, he realized, was too amazing to be frittered out in this
aimless sickness of heart. There were truths and wonders to be
grasped, if he could only throw off this wistful vague desire. He
felt like a clumsy strummer seated at a dark shining grand piano,
which he knows is capable of every glory of rolling music, yet he
can only elicit a few haphazard chords.

He had his moments of arrogance, too. Ah, he was very young! This
miracle of blue unblemished sky that had baffled all others since
life began--he, he would unriddle it! He was inclined to sneer at