'Oh yes. I wanted to do it all.' He wanted to do it, and he _had_ done
it. But God knows what he wanted to do it for. He had now one day at
Lucerne, one day at Interlaken and Berne, then London.
I was sorry for him in my soul, he was so cruelly tired, so perishingly
victorious.
'Why did you do so much?' I said. 'Why did you come on foot all down the
valley when you could have taken the train? Was it worth it?'
'I think so,' he said.
Yet he was sick with fatigue and over-exhaustion. His eyes were quite
dark, sightless: he seemed to have lost the power of seeing, to be
virtually blind. He hung his head forward when he had to write a post
card, as if he felt his way. But he turned his post card so that I
should not see to whom it was addressed; not that I was interested; only
I noticed his little, cautious, English movement of privacy.
'What time will you be going on?' I asked.
'When is the first steamer?' he said, and he turned out a guide-book
with a time-table. He would leave at about seven.
'But why so early?' I said to him.
He must be in Lucerne at a certain hour, and at Interlaken in the
evening.
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