of getting into the heart of books. One who
studies is not being a fool: that is an established truth. I thanked Dr.
Julius for planting it among my recollections. The bone and marrow of
study form the surest antidote to the madness of that light gambler, the
heart, and distasteful as books were, I had gained the habit of
sitting down to them, which was as good as an instinct toward the right
medicine, if it would but work.

On an afternoon of great heat I rode out for a gaze at the lake-palace,
that I chose to fancy might be the last, foreseeing the possibility of
one of my fits of movement coming on me before sunset. My very pulses
throbbed 'away!' Transferring the sense of overwhelming heat to my moral
condition, I thought it the despair of silliness to stay baking in that
stagnant place, where the sky did nothing but shine, gave nothing forth.
The sky was bronze, a vast furnace dome. The folds of light and shadow
everywhere were satin-rich; shadows perforce of blackness had light
in them, and the light a sword-like sharpness over their edges. It
was inanimate radiance. The laurels sparkled as with frost-points; the
denser foliage dropped burning brown: a sickly saint's-ring was round
the heads of the pines. That afternoon the bee hummed of thunder, and
refreshed the ear.

I pitied the horse I rode, and the dog at his heels, but for me the
intensity was inspiriting. Nothing lay in the light, I had the land
to myself. 'What hurts me?' I thought. My physical pride was up, and I
looked on the cattle in black corners of the fields, and here and there
a man tumbled anyhow, a wreck of limbs, out of the insupportable glare,
with an even glance. Not an eye was lifted on me.

I saw nothing that moved until a boat shot out of the bight of sultry
lake-water, lying close below the dark promontory where I had drawn
rein. The rower was old Schwartz Warhead. How my gorge rose at the
impartial brute! He was rowing the princess and a young man in uniform
across the lake.

That they should cross from unsheltered paths to close covert was
reasonable conduct at a time when the vertical rays of the sun were
fiery arrow-heads. As soon as they were swallowed in the gloom I sprang
in my saddle with torture, transfixed by one of the coarsest shafts of
hideous jealousy. Off I flew, tearing through dry underwood, and round
the bend of the lake, determined to confront her, wave the man aside,
and have my last word with the false woman. Of t