"Kind of seems to me as if he must have felt like you did when you wrote that piece tonight," he observed diffidently. "As if trouble did not amount to much, taken right. I'll get back to Phil, now. She might be anxious."
Could that be what Desire had meant me to understand? Was there indeed some quality of courage——?
That is why my most successful composition from the standpoint of money and popularity went to the publisher under the title, "Shadows of Hills." Of course no one connected the allusion. The general interpretation was best expressed by the cover design of the first printing: a sketch of a mountain-shaded lake on which floated a canoe containing two young persons. I was well pleased to have it so.
But—in what land unknown to man towered the vast mountains in whose shadow I panted and strove? Or was my foot indeed upon the mountain itself?
I did not know. I do not know, now.
CHAPTER XI
"If the Dreamer finds himself in an unknown place, ignorant of the country and the people, let him be aware that such place is to be understood of the Other World."—Oneirocritica Achmetis.
In the morning I drove down to New York. There were affairs demanding attention. Also, I was pressed by an eagerness to get my over-night work into the hands of the publisher. To be exact, I wanted to put the manuscript out of reach of the Thing at the house. Without reason, I had awakened with that instinct strong within me.