e, none whatever.'

A vague suspicion that others might be likely to share Heron's view
prevented my seeking the counsel of my few friends; and also, I fear,
tended rather to strengthen my inclinations to go my own way. The more
I thought upon it, the more determined I became to cut completely
adrift from my present life; to find a way of escaping all its
insistent calls; to get far enough away from my life (so to say) to be
able calmly and thoughtfully to observe it, and seek to understand it.
I did not admit this, but I suppose my real aim was to escape from
myself.

'Your lease is not a long one, in any case,' I told myself. 'While yet
you have the chance cease to be a machine, and begin to live as a
rational, reasoning creature. Be done with your petty striving after
ends you have forgotten, or cannot see, or care nothing for. Get out
into the open, and live, and think!'

I do not quite know the basis of my conviction that I should never
make old bones, as the saying goes. The life assurance offices
certainly shared this view, for they would have none of me. (I had
long since thought of taking out what is called a double endowment
policy.) My father died at an early age, and I had known good health
hardly at all since my first two years in London. The doctor who had
last examined me showed that he thought poorly of my heart; and,
indeed, experience had taught me that prolonged gastric disorder is
calculated to affect injuriously most organs of the human anatomy. But
the thinking and planning with regard to a radical change in my life
had given me a certain interest in living, and that had acted
beneficially upon my health; so that, for the time being, I felt
better than for a long while past.

While this fact gave a certain air of unreality to the resignation, on
the grounds of ill-health, from my appointment as a member of
Arncliffe's staff, it did not in the least affect my weariness of
Fleet Street and all its works, or my determination to be done with
them. The circle of my intimates was so very small that the task of
explaining my intentions was not a formidable one, nor even one which
I felt called upon to perform with any particular thoroughness. I
proposed to take a voyage for the good of my health, and did not know
precisely when I should return. That I deemed sufficient for most of
those to whom anything at all needed to be said.

II

There was something strange, a dream-like want of reality, a