silent. It was all so strange; he could hardly adapt himself
to Benda's voice and manner. Memory failed him. The world of Benda was
all too foreign, unknown to him. What he himself felt had no weight with
his friend; it did not even have meaning. With the old sense of dim
defiance, he coaxed the ghost of disappointment into his soul; and his
soul was weighed down by the nocturnal darkness like the glass of his
window.

"Now I am enjoying my home," said Benda thoughtfully, "I am enjoying a
milder light, a more ordered civilisation. I have come to look upon
Germany as a definite figure, to love it as a composite picture. Nature,
really great, grand nature such as formerly seemed beyond the reach of
my longings, such as constituted my idea, my presentiment of perfection,
I have experienced in person; I have lived it. It enticed me, taught me,
and almost destroyed me. All human organisation, on the contrary, has
developed more and more into an idea. In hours that were as full of the
feeling of things as the heart is full of blood, I have seen the scales
of the balance move up and down with the weight of two worlds. The
loneliness, the night, the heavens at night, the forest, the desert
have shown me their true faces. The terribleness that at times proceeds
from them has no equal in any other condition of existence. I understood
for the first time the law that binds families, peoples, states
together. I have repudiated all thought of rebellion, and sworn to
co-operate, to do nothing but co-operate.

"I want to make a confession to you," he continued. "I never had the
faintest conception of the rhythm of life until I went to Africa. I had
known how long it takes to grow a tree; I was familiar with the
metamorphoses through which a plant must pass before it attains to
perfection and becomes what it is; but it had never occurred to me to
apply these laws and facts to our own lives; this had never entered my
mind. I had demanded too much; I had been in too much of a hurry.
Egoistic impatience had placed false weights and measures in my hands.
What I have learned during these seventeen years of trial and hardship
is patience. Everything moves so slowly. Humanity is still a child, and
yet we demand justice of it, expect right and righteous action from it.
Justice? Oh, there is still a long, long road to be travelled before we
reach Justice! The way is as long and arduous as that from the primeval
forest to the cultivated garden.