Impossible!  He couldn’t go back to Jerusalem in three days, nor in three weeks.  His father would be mortally grieved if he did; and Pilate himself would be surprised to see him back so soon and think him lacking altogether in filial affection if, after an absence of more than two years, he could stay only three days with his father.  He must, however, send a letter to Pilate and one that consisted with all the circumstances.  The barely stirring foliage of the acacia inspired a desire of composition:  a more favourable moment than the present, or a more inspiring spot, he did not think he would be likely to find.  He called for his tablets and fell to thinking, but hardly filled in the first dozen lines when his foreman—­this time apologising for the intrusion—­came to tell him that if he wished to reach Magdala that evening they must start at once.  He could not but acquiesce, and—­as if contemptuous of the protection of his escort—­he rode on in front, wishing to be left alone so that he might seek out the terms of his letter, and his mood of irritated perplexity did not pass away till he came within sight of the great upland, rising, however, so gently that he did not think Xerxes would mind ascending it at a gallop.  As soon as he reached the last crest, he would see the lake alone, having—­thanks to the speed of Xerxes—­escaped from his companions for at least five minutes.  He looked forward to these moments eagerly yet not altogether absolved from apprehension of a spiritual kind, for the lake always seemed to him a sort of sign, symbol or hieroglyphic, in which he read a warning addressed specially, if not wholly, to himself.  The meaning that the lake held out to him always eluded him, and never more completely than now, at the end of an almost windless spring evening.

It came into view a moment sooner than he thought for, and in an altogether different aspect—­bluer than ever seen by him in memory or reality—­and, he confessed to himself, more beautiful.  Like a great harp it lay below him, and his eyes followed the coast-lines widening out in an indenture of the hills:  on one side desert, on the other richly cultivated ascents, with villages and one great city, Tiberias—­its domes, cupolas, towers and the high cliffs abutting the lake between Tiberias and Magdala bathed in a purple glow as the sun went down.  My own village! he said, and it was a pleasure to him to imagine his father sipping sherbet on his balcony, in good humour, no doubt, the weather being so favourable to fish-taking.  Now which are Peter’s boats among these? he asked himself, his eyes returning to the fishing fleet.  And which are John’s and James’s boats?  He could tell that all the nets were down by the reefed sails crossed over, for the boats were before the wind.  A long pull back it will be to Capernaum, he was thinking, a matter of thirteen or fourteen miles, for the leading boat is not more than a mile from the mouth of the Jordan.  Then, raising his eyes from the fishing-boats, he followed the coast-lines again, seeking the shapes of the wooded hills, rising in gently cadenced ascents.