The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Return Of The Soul, by Robert S. Hichens

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Return Of The Soul
1896

Author: Robert S. Hichens

Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23419]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RETURN OF THE SOUL ***

Produced by David Widger

THE RETURN OF THE SOUL

By Robert S. Hichens

1896

"I have been here before, But when, or how, I cannot tell!"

Rossetti.

I.

_Tuesday Night, November 3rd_.

Theories! What is the good of theories? They are the scourges that lash
our minds in modern days, lash them into confusion, perplexity, despair.
I have never been troubled by them before. Why should I be troubled by
them now? And the absurdity of Professor Black's is surely obvious. A
child would laugh at it. Yes, a child! I have never been a diary writer.
I have never been able to understand the amusement of sitting down
late at night and scrawling minutely in some hidden book every paltry
incident of one's paltry days. People say it is so interesting to read
the entries years afterwards. To read, as a man, the _menu_ that I ate
through as a boy, the love-story that I was actor in, the tragedy that I
brought about, the debt that I have never paid--how could it profit me?
To keep a diary has always seemed to me merely an addition to the ills
of life. Yet now I have a hidden book, like the rest of the world, and I
am scrawling in it to-day. Yes, but for a reason.

I want to make things clear to myself, and I find, as others, that
my mind works more easily with the assistance of the pen. The actual
tracing of words on paper dispels the clouds that cluster round my
thoughts. I shall recall events to set my mind at ease, to prove to
myself how absurd a man who could believe in Professor Black would
be. "Little Dry-as-dust" I used to call him 'Dry'? He is full of wild
romance, rubbish that a school-girl would be ashamed to believe in. Yet
he is abnormally clever; his record proves that. Still, clever men are
the first to be led astray, they say. It is the searcher who follows the
wandering light. What he says can't be true. When I have