I shall return to this marble cavern and make my
final exit. It will be theatrically artistic--that I vow and
declare--which no doubt will afford immense pleasure to the high
gods in their gallery.
PART II
CHAPTER XXI
It is some two years since I stood for the second time in the
Pinacoteca of Verona and sought to read my fate in the simpering
countenance of Morone's _Miseratrix Virginum Regina_. I met what
might have been expected by a person of any sense--the self-same
expression on the painted face as I had angrily found there two
months before when I began to write the foregoing pages. But as
I had no sense at all in those days I accepted the poor battered
Madonna's lack of sympathy for a sign and a token, went home, and
prepared for dissolution.
Two years ago! It is only for the last few months that I have
been able to look back on that nightmare of a time in Verona with
philosophic equanimity. And this morning is the first occasion
on which I have felt that dispassionate attitude towards a past
self which enables a man to set down without the heartache the
memories of days that are gone.
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