"The scenery of Nepenthe. It got on his nerves; it unstrung him. Does that surprise you too? Don't you feel its effect upon yourself? The bland winds, the sea shining in velvety depths as though filled with some electric fluid, the riot of vegetation, these extravagant cliffs that change colour with every hour of the day? Look at that peak yonder--is it not almost transparent, like some crystal of amethyst? This coast-line alone--the sheer effrontery of its mineral charm--might affect some natures to such an extent as to dislocate their stability. Northern minds seem to become fluid here, impressionable, unstable, unbalanced--what you please. THere is something in the brightness of this spot which decomposes their old particles and arranges them into fresh and unexpected patterns. That is what people mean when they say that they 'diswcover' themselves here. You discover a mechanism, you know, when you take it to pieces. You catch my meaning?" "I catch it." He nodded. He understood perfectly. Some analogous process was going on within him at that moment. He, too, was discovering himself. "Have you discovered yourself, Keith?" "Yes, by other methods, elsewhere. I am only here for a short time in the Spring and another ten days in September. That is hardly enough, even supposing I were the sort of person to be accessible to these externals. I have passed that stage. I am too old, too unemotional. I prefer devouring a partridge EN CASSEROLE or listening to your conversation ("listening to my conversation!" thought Mr. Heard) to all the scenery in the world But I watch other people; I make it my business to study their condition; I put myself in their places. JE CONSTATE, as the French say. To them, the landscape of Nepenthe is alive, often malignantly alive. They do what you cannot so effectually do in the North; they humanize it, identifying its various aspects with their own moods, its features with their own traditions." Mr. Heard thought of those tremendous mists he had seen only an hour ago--the daughters of old Ocean. "They humanize it," he echoed. "The mythopoetic faculty!" "Perhaps this capacity of Southern scenery to bear a mortal interpretation accounts for the anthropomorphic deities of classical days. I often think it does. Even we moderns are unaccountably moved by its varying facets which act sometimes as an aphrodisiac, and sometimes by their very perfection, their discouraging spell, their insolent beauty, suggest the hopelessness of all human endeavour.... Denis! I should think him capable of anything, just now. Do you imagine a person like this could possibly remain insensible to the beguiling influence of these surroundings?" "I never thought about him."