ss of the early day. He felt absurdly happy--as if he had
discovered El Dorado; quite apart from consequences--he was not thinking
of consequences, which of course were another affair--the feeling was
intrinsically the finest one he had ever had, and--as a mere feeling--he
had not done with it yet. The consideration of consequences could easily
be deferred, and there would, meanwhile, be no injury to any one in his
extracting, very quietly, a little subjective joy from the state of his
heart. He would let the flower bloom for a day before plucking it up
by the roots. Upon this latter course he was perfectly resolved, and in
view of such an heroic resolution the subjective interlude appeared
no more than his just privilege. The project of leaving
Blanquais-les-Galets at nine o'clock in the morning dropped lightly from
his mind, making no noise as it fell; but another took its place, which
had an air of being still more excellent and which consisted of starting
off on a long walk and absenting himself for the day. Bernard grasped
his stick and wandered away; he climbed the great shoulder of the
further cliff and found himself on the level downs. Here there was
apparently no obstacle whatever to his walking as far as his fancy
should carry him. The summer was still in a splendid mood, and the hot
and quiet day--it was a Sunday--seemed to constitute a deep, silent
smile on the face of nature. The sea glistened on one side, and the
crops ripened on the other; the larks, losing themselves in the dense
sunshine, made it ring here and there in undiscoverable spots; this
was the only sound save when Bernard, pausing now and then in his walk,
found himself hearing far below him, at the base of the cliff, the
drawling murmur of a wave. He walked a great many miles and passed
through half a dozen of those rude fishing-hamlets, lodged in some
sloping hollow of the cliffs, so many of which, of late years, all along
the Norman coast, have adorned themselves with a couple of hotels and a
row of bathing-machines. He walked so far that the shadows had begun to
lengthen before he bethought himself of stopping; the afternoon had
come on and had already begun to wane. The grassy downs still stretched
before him, shaded here and there with shallow but windless dells. He
looked for the softest place and then flung himself down on the grass;
he lay there for a long time, thinking of many things. He had determined
to give himself up to a day's ha