For such gallant sight Laurence watched, singularly moved, and with a singular eagerness. And so clear was the vision to his mind, so necessary to the completion of the scene upon which his eyes rested, that for some moments he failed to distinguish where actuality ended and hallucination began. He contemplated the creation of his own brain in absorbed interest; then turned and looked at the rough road and dilapidated turnpike house, and then again out to sea. Only a black-hulled, ocean-going tramp, her deckhouses piled up amidships close against her reeking funnel, laboured slowly down channel in the teeth of the gusty breeze. This was all; and then the young man understood, not without amazement, that the gallant show had been a thing of the imagination only,--at most a thing remembered, but how and whence remembered he could not tell. For how, upon any reasonable hypothesis, could the memory of a man like himself of but just over thirty, put back the clock by close upon a century, and disport itself with incidents belonging by rights to, at least, two generations ago? It was all most exceedingly strange. It amounted to being disquieting. Really he did not half like it. Yet the imagined spectacle had been very inspiring all the same. It had made his blood tingle, and had effectually (or disastrously) exorcised that spirit of indolence and _laisser aller_ which he had solicited to take up its abode with him. He sent his horse forward at a sharp trot, while once again he proceeded to revise the situation. For the idea presented itself that perhaps he had been over self-confident, arrogating to himself a far greater freedom of will than he, in point of fact, possessed. It was all very fine to foreswear adventure, but what if adventure refused to be foresworn? He might easily propose to decline upon modernity, mediocrity, and the Commonplace; but what if these, as seemed just now highly probable, asserted in unmistakable language their determination to have none of him? He reflected that temperament may constitute your genius or your fate, your opportunity or your ruin, as you have the wit to deal with it; but that temperament is indestructible, and that escape from it,--however inconvenient and contrary to your desire that temperament may be,--is obviously and inherently impossible.