The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Explorer, by W. Somerset Maugham

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Title: The Explorer

Author: W. Somerset Maugham

Release Date: November 9, 2008 [EBook #27198]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPLORER ***

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THE EXPLORER

BY

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

AUTHOR OF "THE MOON AND SIXPENCE,"
"OF HUMAN BONDAGE," ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY

THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO

MY DEAR MRS. G. W. STEEVENS

THE EXPLORER

I

The sea was very calm. There was no ship in sight, and the sea-gulls
were motionless upon its even greyness. The sky was dark with lowering
clouds, but there was no wind. The line of the horizon was clear and
delicate. The shingly beach, no less deserted, was thick with tangled
seaweed, and the innumerable shells crumbled under the feet that trod
them. The breakwaters, which sought to prevent the unceasing
encroachment of the waves, were rotten with age and green with the
sea-slime. It was a desolate scene, but there was a restfulness in its
melancholy; and the great silence, the suave monotony of colour, might
have given peace to a heart that was troubled. They could not assuage
the torment of the woman who stood alone upon that spot. She did not
stir; and, though her gaze was steadfast, she saw nothing. Nature has
neither love nor hate, and with indifference smiles upon the light at
heart and to the heavy brings a deeper sorrow. It is a great irony that
the old Greek, so wise and prudent, who fancied that the gods lived
utterly apart from human passions, divinely unconscious in their high
palaces of the grief and joy, the hope and despair, of the turbulent
crowd of men, should have gone down to posterity as the apostle of
brutish pleasure.

But the silent woman did not look for solace. She had a vehement pride
whic