Those thoughts were depressing. I could not banish them.
The next day the mood persisted. I had nothing to do, did not feel like
doing anything in particular and yet felt restless. The weather was
perfect. I set off afoot for a place not far from my cottage, not far
enough to be called a long walk, where a big gray crag or small cliff like
an inland promontory, a spur of a forested mountain, towered up from the
southeastern side of the Flaminian Highway. At that point the road was the
boundary of the Imperial estate; the crag lay outside it, and, at that
part of its foot which projected farthest, was not a hundred yards from
the highway. The mountain rose a thousand feet or more from the meadows
along the road. The crag was full three hundred feet high. It was
perfectly possible to toil up the steep wooded slope of the mountain and
walk out on either of two bush-covered shelves which ran round the crag.
From the lower of these, where it belted the front of the vertical cliff,
there was a fine view down upon the highway and along it both ways; from
the upper more of the highway could be seen; from the very top of the
crag, which was bare except for two clumps of gnarled trees and starved
bushes near its brow, the view included a full two miles of the highway in
each direction.
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