the all but motionless air.

Roderick lay observing it all with his arms thrown back and his hands
under his head. "This suits me," he said; "I could be happy here and
forget everything. Why not stay here forever?" He kept his position for
a long time and seemed lost in his thoughts. Rowland spoke to him, but
he made vague answers; at last he closed his eyes. It seemed to Rowland,
also, a place to stay in forever; a place for perfect oblivion of the
disagreeable. Suddenly Roderick turned over on his face, and buried it
in his arms. There had been something passionate in his movement; but
Rowland was nevertheless surprised, when he at last jerked himself back
into a sitting posture, to perceive the trace of tears in his eyes.
Roderick turned to his friend, stretching his two hands out toward the
lake and mountains, and shaking them with an eloquent gesture, as if his
heart was too full for utterance.

"Pity me, sir; pity me!" he presently cried. "Look at this lovely world,
and think what it must be to be dead to it!"

"Dead?" said Rowland.

"Dead, dead; dead and buried! Buried in an open grave, where you lie
staring up at the sailing clouds, smelling the waving flowers, and
hearing all nature live and grow above you! That 's the way I feel!"

"I am glad to hear it," said Rowland. "Death of that sort is very near
to resurrection."

"It 's too horrible," Roderick went on; "it has all come over me here
tremendously! If I were not ashamed, I could shed a bushel of tears. For
one hour of what I have been, I would give up anything I may be!"

"Never mind what you have been; be something better!"

"I shall never be anything again: it 's no use talking! But I don't know
what secret spring has been touched since I have lain here. Something
in my heart seemed suddenly to open and let in a flood of beauty and
desire. I know what I have lost, and I think it horrible! Mind you,
I know it, I feel it! Remember that hereafter. Don't say that he
was stupefied and senseless; that his perception was dulled and his
aspiration dead. Say that he trembled in every nerve with a sense of
the beauty and sweetness of life; that he rebelled and protested and
shrieked; that he was buried alive, with his eyes open, and his heart
beating to madness; that he clung to every blade of grass and every
way-side thorn as he passed; that it was the most horrible spectacle you
ever witnessed; that it was an outrage, a murder, a massacre!"

"Good heav