insults of the morning, and
the harrowing business of the letter, had strung him to that point when
pain is almost pleasure, time shrinks to a mere point, and death and
life appear indifferent. To and fro he paced like a caged brute; his
mind whirling through the universe of thought and memory; his eyes, as
he went, skimming the legends on the wall. The crumbling whitewash was
all full of them: Tahitian names, and French, and English, and rude
sketches of ships under sail and men at fisticuffs.

It came to him of a sudden that he too must leave upon these walls the
memorial of his passage. He paused before a clean space, took the pencil
out, and pondered. Vanity, so hard to dislodge, awoke in him. We call it
vanity at least; perhaps unjustly. Rather it was the bare sense of his
existence prompted him; the sense of his life, the one thing wonderful,
to which he scarce clung with a finger. From his jarred nerves there
came a strong sentiment of coming change; whether good or ill he could
not say: change, he knew no more--change with inscrutable veiled face,
approaching noiseless. With the feeling came the vision of a
concert-room, the rich hues of instruments, the silent audience, and the
loud voice of the symphony. "Destiny knocking at the door," he thought;
drew a stave on the plaster, and wrote in the famous phrase from the
Fifth Symphony. "So," thought he, "they will know that I loved music and
had classical tastes. They? He, I suppose: the unknown, kindred spirit
that shall come some day and read my _memor querela_. Ha, he shall have
Latin too!" And he added: _terque quaterque beati Queis ante ora
patrum_.

He turned again to his uneasy pacing, but now with an irrational and
supporting sense of duty done. He had dug his grave that morning; now he
had carved his epitaph; the folds of the toga were composed, why should
he delay the insignificant trifle that remained to do? He paused and
looked long in the face of the sleeping Huish, drinking disenchantment
and distaste of life. He nauseated himself with that vile countenance.
Could the thing continue? What bound him now? Had he no rights?--only
the obligation to go on, without discharge or furlough, bearing the
unbearable? _Ich trage unertraegliches_, the quotation rose in his mind;
he repeated the whole piece, one of the most perfect of the most perfect
of poets; and a phrase struck him like a blow: _Du, stolzes Herz, du
hast es ja gewollt._ Where was the pride of h