in a strange place; and I was a stranger in it. It seemed rather
a lonely place at first, though it was not unpleasing to me as I looked
abroad. The scenery was mountainous and solemn, but it was therefore
on a large scale and restful to the eye. It had more grandeur than
beauty, to my first impression; but I remembered that I was not in a
condition of mind to be receptive of the merely beautiful, which might
exist for me without my perception of it, even as the life of the dead
existed without the perception of the living. Death, if it had taught
me less up to that time than it might have done to nobler men, had at
least done so much as this: it had accustomed me to respect the unseen,
and to regard its possible action upon the seen as a matter of import.
As I looked forth upon the hills and skies, the plains and forests, and
on to the distant signs of human habitation in the scenery about me, I
thought:--

"I am in a world where it is probable that there exist a thousand
things which I cannot understand to one which I can."

It seemed to me a very uncomfortable state of affairs, whatever it was.
I felt estranged from this place, even before I was acquainted with it.
Nothing in my nature responded to its atmosphere; or, if so, petulantly
and with a kind of helpless antagonism, like the first cry of the
new-born infant in the old life.

As I got myself languidly to my feet, and idly trod the path which lay
before me, for lack of knowing any better thing to do, I began to
perceive that others moved about the scene; that I was not, as I had
thought, alone, but one of a company, each going on his errand as he
would. I only seemed to have no errand; and I was at a great distance
from these people, whose presence, however, though so remote, gave me
something of the sense of companionship which one whose home is in a
lonely spot upon a harbour coast has in watching the head-lights of
anchored ships upon dark nights. Communication there is none, but
desolation is less for knowing that there could be, or for fancying
that there might.

Across the space between us, I looked upon my fellow-citizens in this
new country, with a dull emotion not unlike gratitude for their
existence; but I felt little curiosity about them. I was too unhappy
to be so easily diverted. It seemed to me that the memory of my wife
would become a mania to me, if I could in no way make known to her how
utterly I loved her and how I scorned myself