But now the old question kept recurring, and the sphinx would have an answer. The premature harvest was over (he was in Spain), forced into sooner ripeness by those passionate skies; all the country was burned, the herbage gone, the hot earth cracked and ravined. Only the yellow oranges were yet to come, that ripened for the winter; and the orange groves still gave some verdure to the hills, contrasting with the sober skies. Along the ridge by the Mediterranean was a file of graceful palm trees, swinging their languid arms above the sea. Vane had come along the coast as far as Tarragona; and he was lying in the shadow of the lovely hill of Monserrat, thinking. He had been reading his letters again; and was seeking to come to some resolve. Nobody in the world had any claim upon his action now, save only the old doctor at Rennes. Vane had promised him a visit every summer. He had now no great duty in America; but still, he felt that he must soon be going back. For good or evil, his path lay there. And after all, this island in an eddy of the world, this shore of the Mediterranean, facing backward to the East--it was idle staying here. He smiled to himself as he thought of his own older thoughts, when he had melodramatically planned for a war or some forlorn hope in African discovery. There is something half shameful, half sad, in seeing one's own older folly, one's boyish vanity and egotism. He had the necessary money now, but there was no longer anything attractive to him in the life of Paris; even dreams of adventure in the Soudan did not now fire his imagination. Vane had learned that no American could do without America, least of all an American with nothing but his country left. What was he doing on this shelvage of a bounded sea? this stage setting for past dramas, where the play was over and the lights turned out. And Vane thought to himself of Bellefontaine, Ohio, and the great future of the West, and eager Wall Street. The phrases rolled off glibly, like a well-taught lesson. Still, their being trite did not prevent their being true. Surely there was something real, something actual, progressive in America, to make one's life worth living there. His own country aroused his interest, was worth his study. As for the trivial girl with whom he had flirted--by whom he had been corrupted--he had wasted his time over her. When he went back he would go farther abroad.