of my surroundings. In the early morning I looked down
on a feathery mist hiding the world, a mist presently to be shot with
silver and sapphire-blue, dissolved by slow enchantment until there lay
revealed the plain and the shimmering ocean with its distant islands
trembling in the haze. At sunset my eyes sought the mountains, mountains
unreal, like glorified scenery of grand opera, with violet shadows in the
wooded canon clefts, and crags of pink tourmaline and ruby against the
skies. All day long in the tempered heat flowers blazed around me,
insects hummed, lizards darted in and out of the terrace wall, birds
flashed among the checkered shadows of the live oaks. That grove of
gnarled oaks summoned up before me visions of some classic villa poised
above Grecian seas, shining amidst dark foliage, the refuge of forgotten
kings. Below me, on the slope, the spaced orange trees were heavy with
golden fruit.

After a while, as I grew stronger, I was driven down and allowed to walk
on the wide beach that stretched in front of the gay houses facing the
sea. Cormorants dived under the long rollers that came crashing in from
the Pacific; gulls wheeled and screamed in the soft wind; alert little
birds darted here and there with incredible swiftness, leaving tiny
footprints across the ribs and furrows of the wet sand. Far to the
southward a dark barrier of mountains rose out of the sea. Sometimes I
sat with my back against the dunes watching the drag of the outgoing
water rolling the pebbles after it, making a gleaming floor for the light
to dance.

At first I could not bear to recall the events that had preceded and
followed my visit to Krebs that Sunday morning. My illness had begun that
night; on the Monday Tom Peters had come to the Club and insisted upon my
being taken to his house.... When I had recovered sufficiently there had
been rather a pathetic renewal of our friendship. Perry came to see me.
Their attitude was one of apprehension not unmixed with wonder; and
though they, knew of the existence of a mental crisis, suspected, in all
probability, some of the causes of it, they refrained carefully from all
comments, contenting themselves with telling me when I was well enough
that Krebs had died quite suddenly that Sunday afternoon; that his
death--occurring at such a crucial moment--had been sufficient to turn
the tide of the election and make Edgar Greenhalge mayor. Thousands who
had failed to understand Hermann Krebs,