Between the grey walls of its bath--so like its cradle and its
coffin--lay one of those small and lonely creatures which inhabit the
surface of the earth for seventy years.

As on every other evening the sun was sinking and the moon, unseen, was
rising.

The round head of flesh and bone floated upon the deep water of the
bath.

"Why should I move?" rolled its thoughts, bewitched by solitude. "The
earth itself is moving.

"Summer and winter and winter and summer I have travelled in my head,
saying--'All secrets, all wonders, lie within the breast!' But now that
is at an end, and to-morrow I go upon a journey.

"I have been accustomed to finding something in nothing--how do I know
if I am equipped for a larger horizon!..."

And suddenly the little creature chanted aloud:--

"The strange things of travel,
The East and the West,
The hill beyond the hill,--
They lie within the breast!"



PART I