nearest drug-store; but even as he tried to force the thought on his subconscious mind, he knew that he was only playing hide-and-seek with his sensations, that he was bluffing himself.
There was no doubt of it. The land was living, living!—just as his wife had said—and, beneath his feet, it bunched with a terrible power that sought to dispel and drive him through space—like something hated and useless which was not wanted, here, in Corsica.
His sense of hearing became tensely acute, and, in the hot, still air, the whisper of the earth grew—it flew up and called to him with a great, broken, rumbling shout.
He trembled, then lurched curiously to one side. The balance and adjustment of his physical frame seemed to shift and alter. Very suddenly a black haze shot with sulfurous-yellow, rose in the west. The ocean bloated and recoiled. The harried sun shivered out of sight. The ground writhed and groaned like a woman in travail. A wind sprang up, red-hot as from a gigantic furnace, and rattled all the million leaves.
Another writhe and groan, of unutterable suffering and unutterable loneliness.
