II
Jerome Mocs gave chase. Overnight, without a word even to Arped, he vanished from his friends’ midst, a prey to one of those ungovernable impulses that have their breeding-place in empty, worked-out brains, and exasperated nerves.
Himself he felt as if, by yielding to the urge, he was escaping from a world peopled by bloodless shades. Of which his art was as chimerical as any. And at first the novelty of his journeyings — until now he had travelled only in tones, with an eye everlastingly bent on notes and staves — helped him to the belief that he was in touch with reality at last. His way, too, led him through many lovely places, the time of the year was spring, and he but two-and-twenty.
But the clues he followed continued of the slightest — a word here, a line of print there, a gl
