To go back to his work was directly against the doctor’s orders, but go somewhere he must. He packed his portmanteau, and tried to think of any place in the world he wished to see, but could not care even to return to his own country. All things were “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.”
“Fate shall decide,” he said to himself with the ghost of a smile playing about his lips. And dragging out an ancient atlas from the pile of books on the sitting-room table, he opened at the map of Europe and solemnly spun a threepenny bit. After threatening to come to an end in the middle of the German Ocean it finally settled down in Holland.
“Via Harwich and the Hook,” said Macneillie pocketing the arbiter of his fate. “So be it. I will run across and see if the bulbs are coming into bloom.”
CHAPTER XL
“Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping, but never dead
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own;
Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes,