After dinner he smoked a cigar, then went into
his study and locked the door. He sat down before the desk, and for
a moment experienced a feeling of dread. He wanted no more visions:
would contact with those papers induce another? He would like to read
that poem with the calm criticism of a trained and cultivated mind; he
had no desire to be whirled back into his study at Constantinople, his
brain throbbing and bursting with what was coming next. He shrugged
his shoulders. It was a humiliating confession, but there were forces
over which he had no control; there was nothing to do but resign
himself to the inevitable.
He opened the drawer and took out the manuscript. To his unspeakable
satisfaction he remained calm and unperturbed. He felt merely a
cold-blooded content that he had balked his enemies and that his
ambition was to be gratified. Once, before he opened the paper, he
smiled at his readiness to accept the theory of reincarnation. It had
taken complete possession of him, and he felt not the slightest desire
to combat it. Did a doubt cross his mind, he had but to recall the
park seen by his spiritual eyes, as he descended upon it to be born
again.
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