CHAPTER XII
THE MEETING AT THE PAGAN ALTAR
After Telepi had gone back, a deep melancholy took possession of me.
My wife was ill, and I had never even dreamt of the possibility of such a thing. What if she were to die without being able to exchange a last adieu? She wants to set me free, she says; but how? She cannot tell me. She cannot tell anybody. Why should she have any secrets from me? Ah! that green-eyed monster is a bad guide to the imagination. A celebrated actress can so readily find protectors. Perhaps they are men in authority, who hold life and death in their hands. Oh, eternal darkness, do not deprive me of the light of my reason! Suppose I were to gain readmittance into the world at such a price as that! This condition of mind was becoming absolutely unendurable.
Sometimes the desire seized me to rush out of the forest, knock at the door of the first Commandant I came to, and give up my name: "I am that notorious rebel—take my head, I'll pay the price!"
But my given word, my word of honour, held me back. Ah! a man's word of honour must be kept, even though it be only given to his wife.
I had promised to go nowhere. But surely the forest is nowhere, and that Precipice Stone is, indeed, the most out-of-the-way nowhere in the whole world. Thither no man ever goes. Thither at least I am free to go.
My first, not very successful, picture of the great panorama I had sent to my wife. I would now have another try at it.
One fine autumn morning I again took up my lead-loaded stick, and said to my dear good hostess that she was not to expect me home to dinner that day, as I was going to scramble up to the Pagan Altar and sketch there.