or life, rich with solace of books and tranquil meditation.

* * * * *

I have dwelt upon the outward aspects of my life in exile, because the
sojourn of these years amid the hills and forests taught a natural
leechcraft which was to stand me in good stead in coming years, and may
stand in equal stead other souls desolate as mine. Like the Nile
brimming over the fields, a flood of joy from nature overlaid my parched
being, enriching it with a fertile loam, and shielding it from the
irritations of the world. I lay fallow beneath the still, sunlit waters,
unharrowed by teasing points of doubt, and porous to the influence of an
all-encompassing peace. Exile had opened to me a new heaven and a new
earth, whose freshness and calm charmed thought away from all vain
questionings; the fascination of outward things had for a while cooled
the useless ardour of introspection. But it was inevitable that the
bland ease of such a contemplative life should bring no enduring
satisfaction to the mind; it was not an end in itself, but a mere means
to serenity, a breathing-space useful to the recovery of a long-lost
fortitude. The time was now come when the hunted deer, refreshed in the
quiet of his inaccessible glen, was to awake to new thought of the herd,
and of the duties of a common life; when the peace of successful flight
was to appear in its true light as a momentary release, and no longer as
the ultimate goal imagined in the anguish of pursuit.

It was during this last monsoon that doubts began to stir within,
interrupting my studies of the systems of Hindu philosophy and my
porings over sacred books. The vague insistence of these misgivings made
me surely aware that even in this eastern paradise all was not well;
but at first I refused to listen, and plunged deep into the maze of the
Vedanta to escape the importunate voice. Yet anxiety came up around me
like a heavy atmosphere; an indescribable sense of disillusion, clinging
as a damp mist, brought its mildew to the soul, until my new heaven was
overcast and my new earth dispeopled of all pleasures. Then one day the
fever struck me down, and of a sudden my mind became an arena in which
memories of earlier life chased one another unceasingly in the round of
a delirious dance. Trivial events impressed themselves on consciousness
with strange precision; objects long forgotten rose before me outlined
in fire--one, a pane of stained glass in Fairford C