All the facts and forms of life remain
darkling and cold. It was an upland of melancholy questionings, a region
from which I saw all the world at new angles and in new aspects; I had
outflanked passion and romance.
I had come into a condition of vast perplexities. For the first time in
my life, at least so it seems to me now in this retrospect, I looked at
my existence as a whole.
Since this was nothing, what was I doing? What was I for?
I was going to and fro about Tono-Bungay--the business I had taken up
to secure Marion and which held me now in spite of our intimate
separation--and snatching odd week-ends and nights for Orpington, and
all the while I struggled with these obstinate interrogations. I used
to fall into musing in the trains, I became even a little inaccurate and
forgetful about business things. I have the clearest memory of myself
sitting thoughtful in the evening sunlight on a grassy hillside that
looked toward Seven Oaks and commanded a wide sweep of country, and that
I was thinking out my destiny. I could almost write my thought down now,
I believe, as they came to me that afternoon.
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