ast rose the cone of a great solitary hill, always
outlined against the sky with a majestic isolation that lent it an
almost personal existence, and at the birth of every day bearing the orb
of the rising sun upon its wooded shoulder. Round about, in scattered
villages of thatched and mud-walled huts, dwelled brown men of ancient
pagan ways, men who neither knew progress nor set any price upon time.

There I entered upon a wholly new existence as remote from all the
social trials which beset shyness as if it were passed in some island of
the uttermost sea. I had escaped from a harrying pursuit; I was free;
and to the bliss of this recovered liberty I abandoned myself, without
attempting to justify my flight to conscience or forming any scheme for
future years. Like a deer which has eluded the hounds, I yearned only
for rest and long oblivion of the chase; I wanted to live woodland days
until, all the strain and panic of the past forgotten, I might rise
refreshed and see a new way clear before me.

And this first abandonment was a time of ecstasy. The long tranquil days
were crowned by nights of peace yet more desired. I lay beneath the
verandah and watched the stars in their splendour, not the pin-points of
cold light that pierce our misty western heavens, but bright orbs in
innumerable companies hovering upon the tranced earth. Night after night
I saw the incomparable vision; month after month the moon rose slowly
over the high wall of the jungle, first a great globe imminent upon the
trees, next soaring remote through the upper heavens, waning at last to
a sphere of pale unquickening light. I would lie thus for hours
motionless, with lulled mind, until the breeze forerunning the dawn, or
the quavering wail of the jackal, recalled the startled thought to the
prison bonds of self.

With the gentle lapse of months all these impersonal influences took
dominion over me and gave me a quiet happiness never known before. The
nights brought the greater light; but the days too had their glories. I
would climb the rugged sides of the mountain, and emerging into a colder
world sit beneath an overhanging rock and see the hot air quivering
over leagues of plain; while in the nearer distance, far down beneath my
feet, the rice-fields shone like emerald and the palm-fringed pools like
shields of silver. Or I would stretch myself at early afternoon on the
close-cropped grass on the jungle-edge, and watch the opposite sky take
on an