There was a long silence, and then Randal slowly rose, saying:
'Well, my friend, if it is in that temper that we set out for our last hunt for happiness, I think that we may be said to carry the game with us. Ah, truly,' he went on, as they turned back and looked once more out eastward across the red-roofed town, the bright islands, the promontories, the foam-fringed bays, and the blue expanse of the Mediterranean—'ah, truly, that is exactly what we get (I had almost said all we get, erring profanely), that guerdon of eternal peace, and you are right to invest it with warm and human attributes. It shows, I say, that you are still on the right side of thirty; but I, who am only just on the right side of forty, and who (may I say it?) militavi non sine gloria as a praiser of Pantheism and the final repose of the ego, have quite failed to find poetic expression for my later views. You know how utterly dry my spring has run. I have not written a personal poem this decade. I am smitten with impotence. I feel as acutely, or almost as acutely, as ever I did; but why repeat myself? I have lost all interest in my own sensations, and almost all interest in other people's. Only my knowledge of life has kept me from some desperate and insane enthusiasm—such as Socialism or Toryism. Often I am in danger of that sombre rage, that sæva
