eBooks Base 2000

And, from henceforth, he was his own master, his thoughts, actions,
purposes, belonging to himself and to himself alone. Really the position
was a little intoxicating! Realizing it, as he sat in the somewhat stuffy
first-class carriage, on that brief hour's journey from Southampton to
Marychurch, he had laughed out loud, hunching up his shoulders saucily,
in a sudden outburst of irrepressible and boyish glee.
But as the line, clearing the purlieus of the great seaport, turns
south-westward running through the noble oak and beech woods of Arnewood
Forest, crossing its bleak moorlands--silver pink, at the present season,
with fading heather--and cutting through its plantations of larch and
Scotch fir, Tom Verity's mood sobered. He watched the country reeling
away to right and left past the carriage windows, and felt its peculiarly
English and sylvan charm. Yet he saw it all through a dazzle, as of
mirage, in which floated phantom landscapes strangely different in
sentiment and in suggestion.


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