He confided in Madame, who was lolling in a deckchair. On her lap was a guide-book, in which she had been gleaning facts about the island. Indulgently she listened, smiled archly when Paul—with belated, cynical gallantry—included her in his scheme of exile, then informed him that his island was infested with snakes.
In despair at the incomprehension of everybody, nerveless and dispirited, he went below. That poor little island, so low that an hour's smart sailing had sunk its highest tree-top below the horizon! And the sandpiper that had been blown off-shore to die of fright on a foreign, heaving deck!
That night he came to a decision. The life of the sea was not to be his life. His destiny lay ashore—on some quiet acre remote from the teeming life of the universe. The diminutive island had marked the beginning of a new variation of the endless theme.
After unloading at the mouth of the Sacramento River, Paul's ship was towed into San Francisco bay and thence up the coast to the port of Eureka, where she was to take on a cargo of redwood. Paul had decided to return in her to Toulon, whence he would make his way into Germany and recast his life in a more fitting mould. The prospect of this adventure reawakened a dozen enthusiasms, and stilled the unrest that had been growing for two or three years. His imagination leaped ahead and pictured him at some vast organ. Music might bring into his life the missing elements of direction and meaning.
His picture was clouded by an uneasy wonder: had the interval of silence and growth rendered him incapable of resuming musical studies where he had left off? It seemed half a lifetime since he had played Beethoven in
