It calls me like a mother. There also is the grave of my mother. It holds all the mother love I enjoyed in those days more than most children, and which I was to lose so early. Where in the world should I go but to this old town? I, who return to it, to become a child again.
III have neither slept nor been awake during the journey. I have been sitting on deck all through the warm light summer-night, letting my thoughts dreamily follow the golden track of the steamer, rocked gently by the heavy, regular beat of the machinery and the sobbing sound of the dancing waves against the sides of the steamer.
My thoughts wander back along that golden track to the life and the world in which I so lately took part. I feel already so curiously removed from it all, so strangely aloof. How indifferent, empty and unimportant it all seems to me now. And for that I have sacrificed fifteen of my best years. Nobody has been more eager than I, nobody a more fanatical believer. Very young I swore allegiance to the banner of my party, fought bravely and blindly in the ranks, was promoted and won pretty nearly all the distinction my ambition could expect.
I have been in the midst of battle, I have hated and worshipped, I have never broken my banner-oath, and I have never been tempted to do so. I have won friends and enemies, and done good and evil according to my judgment and conscience.
