his own master, to call himself sane.

He scrambled up and turned his face towards the westering sun.
What was there in the stillness of its beautiful splendour that
seemed to sharpen his horror and difficulty, and yet to stir him
to such a daring and devilry as he had never known since he was a
boy? There was little sound of life; somewhere an unknown bird
was singing, and a few late bees were droning in the bracken. All
these years he had, like an old blind horse, stolidly plodded
round and round in a dull self-set routine. And now, just when
the spirit had come for rebellion, the mood for a harmless
truancy, there had fallen with them too this hideous enigma. He
sat there with the dusky silhouette of the face that was now
drenched with sunlight in his mind's eye. He set off again up the
stony incline.

Why not walk on and on? In time real wholesome weariness would
come; he could sleep at ease in some pleasant wayside inn,
without once meeting the eyes that stood as it were like a window
between himself and a shrewd incredulous scoffing world that
would turn him into a monstrosity and his story into a fable. And
in a little while, perhaps in three days, he would awaken out of
this engrossing nightmare, and know he was free, this black dog
gone from his back, and (as the old saying expressed it without
any one dreaming what it really meant) his own man again. How
astonished Sheila would be; how warmly she would welcome him!...
Oh yes, of course she would.

He came again to a standstill. No voice answered him out of that
illimitable gold and blue. Nothing seemed aware of him. But as he