business of mine I did not trouble.  She seemed more attached to A. than ever....  A. was still very loving with me, but it was an effort to me to keep up to her pitch, and when A. proposed to go to Melbourne with Miss T, to sell off the furniture before settling in Adelaide, I was rather glad of the opportunity of abstaining from coitus and of watching myself to see if I again improved.  When A. and Miss T. came to see me before going down to the steamer, A. was nearly crying and Miss T., changed from the old welcome friend, was not only pale and anxious, but looked guilty as if she had some treachery in her mind; she could not meet my eye.  I thought less of it then than afterwards.  And once more I took long walks at night and rose early to catch the freshness of the mornings.

Some time before this I had read a book advocating a vegetarian diet, and at this time I chanced to read Pater’s beautiful “Denys L’Auxerrois,” the imaginary portrait of a young vine-dresser, who was attractive beyond ordinary mortals and lived, until his fall and deterioration, on fruit and water.  The words, “a natural simplicity in living” remained in my memory.  I resolved to read more carefully the book on scientific diet.  Who can say, I thought, what changes for the better may come to me if I live on a strictly scientific and natural diet?

I fasted one whole day, and then had a breakfast of cherries, in the middle of the day a meal of fruit, and walking in the afternoon—­a gray, rainy day—­I felt so light, so different, and the gray sky looked so sweet and familiar, that I was reminded of the luminous visions of my boyhood.  It was a distinct revelation.  This Pan-like, almost Bacchic feeling, did not last, however, nor was I always able to maintain my new method of diet, though I tried to do so.  I made the attempt, however, but I imagine I was more than usually run down.  I would walk miles in the hope of feeling less restless.  One holiday I walked down to Glenelg, having only had grapes for my dinner, and lying on the beach I looked through a strong binocular glass I had borrowed at the girls bathing.  And the beauty of their faces in their frames of hair, of their arms, of their figures, seen through their wet clinging dresses, satisfied me and filled me with joy, gave me for a short time that peace and content—­in harmony with the strong sunlight on the waves and the rhythmic surf on the shore—­I was seeking.  The summer evenings on the pier or along the beach had a peculiar savor; one felt the youth and beauty there even on dark nights, the air was fragrant with them, white dresses and summer hats disappearing down the beach or over the sand hills.  It was easy—­doubtless justifiable sometimes—­to put a lewd construction on these disappearances; but I felt it need not have been so; that it was not necessary that youth and beauty, even the sexual act itself if led up to by love, should be a subject of giggling