e sunny terrace, with a continually recurring
amazement at the brilliancy 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 Edg