But now he paced soberly, the smoke from his pipe eddying just
above the top of the grasses. He had much to meditate.

The dogwood tree by the house was now in flower. The blossoms,
with their four curved petals, seemed to spin like tiny white
propellers in the bright air. When he saw them fluttering Gissing
had a happy sensation of movement. The business of those
tremulous petals seemed to be thrusting his whole world forward
and forward, through the viewless ocean of space. He felt as
though he were on a ship--as, indeed, we are. He had never been
down to the open sea, but he had imagined it. There, he thought,
there must be the satisfaction of a real horizon.

Horizons had been a great disappointment to him. In earlier days
he had often slipped out of the house not long after sunrise, and
had marvelled at the blue that lies upon the skyline. Here, about
him, were the clear familiar colours of the world he knew; but
yonder, on the hills, were trees and spaces of another more
heavenly tint. That soft blue light, if he could reach it, must
be the beginning of what his mind required.

He envied Mr. Poodle, whose cottage was on that very hillslope
that rose so imperceptibly into sky. One morning he ran and ran,
in the lifting day, but always the blue receded. Hot and
unbuttoned, he came by the curate's house, just as the latter
emerged to pick up the morning paper.

"Where does the blue begin?" Gissing panted, trying hard to keep
his tongue from sliding out so wetly.