In that mood he resolved to remain. It was the only one that was no longer unbearable. To attempt the old beliefs were merely to give hostages to disenchantment. He was done now with disenchantment. He would expect nothing, care for nothing. Except to laugh.
But, in the meanwhile, he could no longer bear the scenes and sounds of the town. He cast about for plans. The thought that in one mind at least his flight would look like cowardice did not annoy him; that also was merely a thing to laugh at. The country was not what he wanted. It was not quiet he desired; it was struggle and strife with the dragons of memory and boredom; he wanted new battles to fight, new experiences to harvest—not sensitively, as of old, but coldly, cruelly—in other fields, as far away as possible.
He unlocked his desk and searched for his bank-book. The figures seemed to satisfy him.
"Three thousand," he murmured, "will be enough. I will take a year. I will see everything that my fancy asks for, do everything, be everything. They call it the Old World. Well, it must be able to furnish amusement for me, be it old or young."
He turned to the unfinished sketches, the letters and the other impediments that littered the room. "These shall not hold me a minute," he said. "I want a change of air. I am going to take it. Nor friends, nor promises, nor prospects shall stay me. It's goodbye."
He laughed again, and went out to buy an evening paper, to scan the sailing-lists for the out-going steamers.
[CHAPTER XIV]
On one of the hottest days of August, a month by no means the most delightful of Berlin's moods, there sat in the pleasant, shady garden of the restaurant "Zum Kapuziner," facing the Schlossplatz, a tall young man, whose material externals proclaimed him, to the trained eye, either as an Englishman or an American. It is a safe axiom that all the well-dressed people in the German capital are either English or American.
In front of the young man, on the table, were a glass, a bottle of Mai-trank and an illustrated paper. But the young man was not regarding any of these things, but kept his eyes to an observance of the passers-by. This seemed to amuse him, for from time to time he smiled softly.