it was at least the only method possible for him, and for no conceivable bribe would he think of going back to the beginning and starting all over again.
He could improve his method, adapt it to his growth, but he could no more change it than he could change the colour of his eyes. Tiens! Phœbe, the day of the party, had been in doubt about the colour of his eyes and to be on the safe side had given out that they were "Uh—blue," like all the other vague eyes in the world. Similarly, society, in doubt about the nature of his method of life, had, to be on the safe side, sought to make him conform to a rule-of-thumb method fit only for bullies and dunces and nonentities incapable of self-navigation. In Aunt Verona's kitchen, year by year, he had felt his theme becoming clearer, stronger, more soaring; his long hours of practice and his miscellaneous reading, his days of German and French, his ambling talks with Mr. Silva and engrossing arguments with Mark Laval, his sentimental exploits and solitary wanderings in the fields, his excursions into the world of day-school and church and his nightly draughts from Aunt Verona's well of wisdom—all had contributed harmonies, rhythms, and sonorities to the theme, and he felt that a clearly defined movement in the vast composition had come to an end with Aunt Verona's death. In Halifax he had hoped to commence a new movement which, if not a variation on the original theme, should at least put forward a theme in keeping with it and develop the opening ideas in some progressive manner. Instead, he had heard but feeble reiterations of outgrown configurations drowned in a discordant chorus.
Whereas here, on the scudding sea, he was in a position to sing forth his theme "full organ." Here the raw materials of life were at hand, to be dealt with as instinct, and not arbitrary authority, should dictate. Authority in this little world was a force which directed
