|
||||||||
believe. I could not be so fortunate. It was too good, too good to be true. Symonss lines came into my head: A world of women, seeking you. And then I had ceased seeking. It was not for me, this greatest thing in the world, I had decided. Furuseth was right; I was abnormal, an emotionless monster, a strange bookish creature, capable of pleasuring in sensations only of the mind. And though I had been surrounded by women all my days, my appreciation of them had been aesthetic and nothing more. I had actually, at times, considered myself outside the pale, a monkish fellow denied the eternal or the passing passions I saw and understood so well in others. And now it had come! Undreamed of and unheralded, it had come. In what could have been no less than an ecstasy, I left my post at the head of the companion-way and started along the deck, murmuring to myself those beautiful lines of Mrs. Browning: Instead of men and women years ago, And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know A sweeter music than they played to me. But the sweeter music was playing in my ears, and I was blind and oblivious to all about me. The sharp voice of Wolf Larsen aroused me. What the hell are you up to? he was demanding. I had strayed forward where the sailors were painting, and I came to myself to find my advancing foot on the verge of overturning a paint-pot. Sleep-walking, sunstroke, - what? he barked. No; indigestion, I retorted, and continued my walk as if nothing untoward had occurred. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
Copyright: All texts on Bibliomania are © Bibliomania.com Ltd, and may not be reproduced in any form without our written permission. See our FAQ for more details. | ||||||||