For
this reason one may perhaps say that there is no other place in which
one's daily temper has such a mellow serenity, and none, at the same
time, in which acute attacks of depression are more intolerable. Rowland
found, in fact, a perfect response to his prevision that to live in Rome
was an education to one's senses and one's imagination, but he sometimes
wondered whether this was not a questionable gain in case of one's not
being prepared to live wholly by one's imagination and one's senses. The
tranquil profundity of his daily satisfaction seemed sometimes to
turn, by a mysterious inward impulse, and face itself with questioning,
admonishing, threatening eyes. "But afterwards...?" it seemed to
ask, with a long reverberation; and he could give no answer but a shy
affirmation that there was no such thing as afterwards, and a hope,
divided against itself, that his actual way of life would last forever.
He often felt heavy-hearted; he was sombre without knowing why; there
were no visible clouds in his heaven, but there were cloud-shadows on
his mood. Shadows projected, they often were, without his knowing it, by
an undue apprehension that things after all might not go so ideally
well with Roderick.
Pages:
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222