de.
Could it be that it was only the night before I had made a speech against
him and his associates? It is interesting that my mind rejected all sense
of anomaly and inconsistency. Krebs possessed me; I must have been in
reality extremely agitated, but this sense of being possessed seemed a
quiet one. An amazing thing had happened--and yet I was not amazed. The
Krebs I had seen was the man I had known for many years, the man I had
ridiculed, despised and oppressed, but it seemed to me then that he had
been my friend and intimate all my life: more than that, I had an odd
feeling he had always been a part of me, and that now had begun to take
place a merging of personality. Nor could I feel that he was a dying man.
He would live on....

I could not as yet sort and appraise, reduce to order the possessions he
had wished to turn over to me.

It was noon, and people were walking past me in the watery, diluted
sunlight, men in black coats and top hats and women in bizarre,
complicated costumes bright with colour. I had reached the more
respectable portion of the city, where the churches were emptying. These
very people, whom not long ago I would have acknowledged as my own kind,
now seemed mildly animated automatons, wax figures. The day was like
hundreds of Sundays I had known, the city familiar, yet passing strange.
I walked like a ghost through it....

XXVI.

Accompanied by young Dr. Strafford, I went to California. My physical
illness had been brief. Dr. Brooke had taken matters in his own hands and
ordered an absolute rest, after dwelling at some length on the vicious
pace set by modern business and the lack of consideration and knowledge
shown by men of affairs for their bodies. There was a limit to the wrack
and strain which the human organism could stand. He must of course have
suspected the presence of disturbing and disintegrating factors, but he
confined himself to telling me that only an exceptional constitution had
saved me from a serious illness; he must in a way have comprehended why I
did not wish to go abroad, and have my family join me on the Riviera, as
Tom Peters proposed. California had been my choice, and Dr. Brooke
recommended the climate of Santa Barbara.

High up on the Montecito hills I found a villa beside the gateway of one
of the deep canons that furrow the mountain side, and day after day I lay
in a chair on the sunny terrace, with a continually recurring amazement
at the brilliancy