Eastward, a few fields' length along the ridge, was the belvedere on his
father's estate. He had not looked at it for years, but from here it was
so little like itself that he could bear to let his eyes dwell on it. It
was built at the fore of a crescent-shaped plantation on the brow of the
hill, and the dark woods stretched away on each side of the temple like
great green wings spread by a small white bird. And eastward yet a mile
or so, at the end of a line of salt-stunted oaks, was the red block of
Yaverland's End. Under that thatch was his mother. She would be asleep
now. Nearly always now she dropped off to sleep before dawn. With a
constriction of the heart he thought of her as she would be looking now,
lying very straight in her narrow bed, one arm crooked behind the head
and the other rigid by her side, the black drift of her hair drawn
across her eyes like a mask and her uncovered mouth speaking very often.
Many of her nights were spent in argument with the dead. At the picture
he felt a rush of love that dizzied him, and he cursed himself for
having left her, until the serenity of the white waters and the limpid
sky imposed reason on his thoughts as it was imposing harmoniousness on
the cries of the seagulls and the shouts of the sailors. Then he
recognised the necessity of this adventure. It was his duty to her to go
out into the world and do great things. He had said so very definitely
to himself, and had turned back to his work with a scowl of resolution.
So that boy, thirteen years before....

He shivered and wished he had not thought of the time when he meant to
do great things, for this was one of the nights when he felt that he had
done nothing and was nothing. He saw his soul as something detached from
his body and inimical to it, an enveloping substance, thin as smoke and
acrid to the smell, which segregated him from the participation in
reality which he felt to be his due, and he changed his position, and
cleared his throat, and stared hard at the people round him and at the