Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/44

 him, something which in a way brought him peace, for the night no longer brought with it a cloud of confused and vague desires. It was not actual hatred that took the place of the torments, but only an indifference which closed him in once and forever from Naomi and Swanson. His life became a solitary thing which did not touch the lives of the others.

For as he plunged into the forest a great light burst upon him and he saw that Naomi, rather than leave Megambo, would have let him stay, without a thought, to die in that malarial hole. 

It was the same dry season that marked the beginning of a new life in which he saw things which remained hidden to the others. It had been going on for a long time before he noticed any change beyond the fact that there were occasions when the lake, the distant mountains, and the flamingo-tinted marshes seemed more beautiful than they had been before. He noticed strange colors in the forest and the sound of bees and the curious throb of tom-toms in the village. Things which once he had felt only with the rawness of frayed nerves, he discovered in a new way. It was as if what had been a nightmare was turning into a pleasant, fantastic dream.

And then one day it came upon him suddenly as a sort of second sight, in a flash of revelation which the Prophets would have said descended to him from God; it was a kind of inspired madness which changed the very contours of the world about him, altered its colors and revealed meanings that lay beneath. For a time