My memory and the
bank-book usually balance to a pound or two."
"Then it's travel you're after?" I asked.
He nodded. "On a journey--_and_ pursuing."
"Big game?"
"You may call it the biggest. Or I'm out to make it the biggest.
. . . Jimmy, pass me the tobacco." He took the jar and, filling his
pipe, lay back in the wicker chair with something like a groan.
"Roddy, can't you _see_? These years, as you know, I've been working
up my inquiry into rage in animals; beginning, that is, with animals,
but always, as you know, intending to carry the inquiry up as soon as
I had a solid working basis. Yes, it was all to proceed on
induction--laborious tests, classifications--you know the system and
that I didn't care if it took a lifetime. Well, all of a sudden, as
I'm beginning to realise that, though the process is sound--must be
sound--pursuit is probably hopeless because it must take twenty
lifetimes--of a sudden, I say, this new way is revealed. Put it that
I've come, all of a start, upon a little stream called Rubicon.
Put it that I've burnt--no, put it that Farrell's myrmidons have
burnt, at a stroke, every boat for me.
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