THE SUPERB MOMENT
to be lost. Whistling, he climbed the terraces of stone, and passing through the window of the Sphinx, descending, took horse on the other side.
The first maddest elation had subsided. He had come down from the skies, but he was still Carron seated on top of the world. His nerves ached with the last three nights of prolonged tension. He had wrenched his shoulder in spoiling Ferrier's aim, and an old rheumatic pain stabbed him with intermittent fury. Yet he had never been so happy in his life. The hot, sweet consciousness of achievement coursed with his blood—not the dubious achievement of the mind, not the quality of facts, but the fact itself, the incontrovertible success of the hands. He had succeeded before. As far as he could remember he had always succeeded; but it had been with lesser things; and then to get one thing he had invariably had to give up another. He had put that down as a rule of life; had never expected anything better; but now he had, at once, the two things of all the world he most wanted. He had only to keep them apart very quietly that the one should not know of the other. It was a dizzying discovery. Never, since he had been a boy, had life seemed so filled to the brim with everything for him, so limitless in possibilities. It appeared to him that nothing would ever say no to him again. He leaned forward into
355
