People come and go here very strangely,
and I have sometimes wondered if it would not soon be time for me to go;
but it would be idle to pretend that I have not been happy here."
XI
What Charmides had told me filled me with great astonishment; it seemed
to me strange that I had not perceived the truth before. It made me feel
that I had somehow been wasting time. I was tempted to call Amroth to my
side, but I remembered what he had said, and I determined to resist the
impulse. I half expected to find that our strange talk, and the very
obvious disapproval of our words, had made some difference to me. But it
was not the case. I found myself treated with the same smiling welcome
as before, and indeed with an added kind of gentleness, such as older
people give to a child who has been confronted with some hard fact of
life, such as a sorrow or an illness. This in a way disconcerted me; for
in the moment when I had perceived the truth, there had come over me the
feeling that I ought in some way to bestir myself to preach, to warn,
to advise. But the idea of finding any sort of fault with these
contented, leisurely, interested people, seemed to me absurd, and so I
continued as before, half enjoying the life about me, and half bored by
it.
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