sit here quiet without being bored, to wait without being impatient, to
be receptive and very alert, though for a long time nothing particular
happened. The change in fact was slow in those early stages."

"Nothing happened?" asked Darcy rather impatiently, with the sturdy
revolt against any new idea which to the English mind is synonymous with
nonsense. "Why, what in the world _should_ happen?"

Now Frank as he had known him was the most generous but most
quick-tempered of mortal men; in other words his anger would flare to a
prodigious beacon, under almost no provocation, only to be quenched
again under a gust of no less impulsive kindliness. Thus the moment
Darcy had spoken, an apology for his hasty question was half-way up his
tongue. But there was no need for it to have traveled even so far, for
Frank laughed again with kindly, genuine mirth.

"Oh, how I should have resented that a few years ago," he said. "Thank
goodness that resentment is one of the things I have got rid of.
I certainly wish that you should believe my story--in fact, you are
going to--but that you at this moment should imply that you do not,
does not concern me."

"Ah, your solitary sojournings have made you inhuman," said Darcy, still
very English.

"No, human," said Frank. "Rather more human, at least rather less of an
ape."

"Well, that was my first quest," he continued, after a moment, "the
deliberate and unswerving pursuit of joy, and my method, the eager