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Wrapping himself closer in his blanket he sought sleep again, striving to quiet his thoughts; but they would not be quieted. All kinds of vain questions ran on, questions to which the wisest have never been able to find answers: if it were good or ill-fortune to have been called out of the great void into life, if the gift of life were one worth accepting, and if it had come to him in an acceptable form. That night in his tent it seemed clear that it would be better to range for ever, from oasis to oasis with the bedouins, who were on their way to meet him, than to return to civilisation. Of civilisation it seemed to him that he had had enough, and he wondered if it were as valuable as many people thought; he had found more pleasure in speaking with his dragoman, learning Arabic from him, than in talking to educated men from the universities and such like. Riches dry up the soul and are an obstacle to the development of self. If he had not inherited Riversdale and its many occupations and duties, he would be to-day an instinctive human being instead of a scrapbook of culture. For a rich man there is no escape from amusements which do not amuse; Riversdale had robbed him of himself, of manhood; what he understood by manhood was not brawn, but instincts, the calm of instincts in contradiction to the agitation of nerves. It would have been better to have known only the simple life, the life of these Arabs! Now they were singing about the camp fires. Queer were the intervals, impossible of notation, but the rhythms might be gathered ... a symphony, a defined scheme.... The monotony of the chant hushed his thoughts, and the sleep into which he fell must have been a deep one.