Most of all, it was the fact of being once more occupied that brought him solace. By what queer doctrine of theologians, by what sheer translator’s error, did man’s inheritance of daily labour come to be accounted as the penalty of his first folly and sin? Work—surely the one merciful gift vouchsafed to Adam by an angry Deity when he went weeping forth from Paradise! Work—with its kindly weariness of body, compelling the weary brain to rest. Work, the everlasting anodyne, the unfailing salve for man’s most unbearable sorrows—which shall last when pleasure and lust and wealth are so many Dead Sea apples in the mouth, a comfort and a refuge when all human loves and loyalties shall fade and fail.
Five days after the “Maid of Athens” took her departure from the Lizard it began to breeze up fr
