“Apart from this, I enjoyed my African experience; the men I was with were all good, dull fellows; I didn’t make friends with any of them, beyond the comradeship of every day. What I enjoyed were the days of hunting, and the nights of waiting under such stars as I’d never seen; well, I suppose it is all lying there now as I write, just as I used to think of the untroubled Weald lying there spread under an English sky. It’s funny to think of places you’ve been to, existing just the same when you aren’t there. Yes, I liked Africa, and I tried to live in the present, but when the expedition was over, and I found myself landed alone at Naples, I realised with a shock that I had only succeeded in putting ten months of my life away behind me, and that an unknown quantity of years stretched out in front.
“I was sitting outside my hotel after luncheon, smoking, and looking over that most obvious and panoramic of bays. I hated Naples, I hated Italy; I thought it a blatant, superficial country, with no mystery, therefore no charm. I had almost made up my mind to take ship for Gibraltar, when a voice beside me said,—
“‘You look pretty blue.’
“I turned round and saw a long, leggy creature stretched out on a deck-chair beside me; he was squinting up at me from under a straw hat.
“‘I feel it,’ I replied; ‘about as blue as that sea.’
“‘What are you going to do?’ he went on.
“I told him that I had just been thinking of going to Gibraltar.
“‘And what’ll you do when you get there?’
“‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ I answered.
“‘On a holiday?’ he inquired.