It was well to lie upon the hilltop and guess at the riddle of the world; now dimly to see the meaning, now to lose it quite, to wonder, to think of death.

The easy consciousness that for him death was scores of years away, that he should not meet the spectre until the wine was all drunken, the garlands withered, and he, the guest, ready to depart, made these speculations not at all unpleasing.

He looked at his hand, blanched by the moonlight, lying beside him upon the grass, and thought how like a dead hand it seemed, and what if he could not move it, nor his body, nor could ever rise from the grass, but must lie there upon the lonely hilltop in the untrodden wilderness, until that which had ridden and hunted and passed so buoyantly through life should become but a few dry bones, a handful of dust.

He was of his time, and its laxness of principle and conduct; if he held within himself the potential scholar, statesman, and philosopher, there were also the skeptic, the egotist, and the libertine.
He followed the fashion and disbelieved much, but he knew that if he died to-night his soul would not stay with his body upon the hilltop.

He wondered, somewhat grimly, what it would do when so much that had clothed it round--pride of life, love of pleasure, desire, ambition--should be plucked away.