Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/28

 he had missed the most important of human experiences. Perhaps, he told himself, that was what the world found lacking in his work; a touch of passion might have made him popular if not distinguished. On the physical side of the question it had occurred to him lately that the attainment of such experience had not yet become an impossibility.

He was, he supposed, at that period which people called in capital letters the Dangerous Age in Men. And lately he had noticed a certain physical change in himself, as though some gland too long inactive had begun at last to perform its functions. He who had always been a thin, fragile little man began to grow heavier and feel stronger. Even his liver seemed to trouble him less. He had begun to experience the growth of a new force and vitality which at times shook him like a fever. He supposed it was that new force which had driven him out today in the burning heat. On the intellectual side he had begun to have a curiosity about life which was altogether new and quite disturbing. It made him feel uneasy and restless, but although he slept less well, the lack of sleep did not appear in his new-found vigor to trouble him. Until the age of fifty-two he had been a literary and classical writer who wrote of love only in its more refined aspects.

The carriage reached the square of Monte Salvatore (that romantic Monte Salvatore of which he had dreamed in his Victorian youth and which now looked a bilious yellow and smelled badly). It passed through the baking streets and began to slip down the opposite side of the hill into another