Walking around the world...

No, there was nothing more to be done. He had tried not to go over the precipice, but perhaps the fall was inevitable. And it comforted him to think that the future was certainly inevitable; cause and effect would go jangling forward to some goal doubtless, but to none that he could imagine. At such moments the soul retires within, to float upon the bosom of a deeper stream, and has communion with the dead, and sees the world’s glory not diminished, but different in kind to what he has supposed. He alters his focus until trivial things are blurred. And ever since this has been the attitude with which he has always confronted life: from things too much waited for, too much embellished with anticipatory daydreams, there is in the end nothing he can do but run away.