Julius LeVallon by Algernon Blackwood — Read

"We do not know where sentient powers, in the widest sense of / / the term, begin or end. And there may be disturbances and moods / / of Nature wherein the very elemental forces approach sentient / / being, so that, perhaps, mythopœic man has not been altogether a / / dreamer of dreams. I need not dwell on the striking reflections / / to which this possibility gives rise; enough that an idealistic / / dynamism forces the possibility on our view. If the life of / / Nature is from time to time, and under special conditions, / / raised to the intense requisite level, we are in the presence of / / elemental forces whose character primitive man has not entirely / / misunderstood." "Individual and Reality" (E. D. Fawcett).

There was an interval of a year and a half before we met again. No letters passed between us, and I had no knowledge of where LeVallon was or what he did. Yet while in one sense we had gone apart, in another sense I knew that our relationship suffered no actual break. It seemed inevitable that we should come together again. Our tie was of such a kind that neither could shake the other off. In the meantime my soldier's career had been abandoned; loss of money in the family decreed a more remunerative destiny; and the interval had been spent learning French and German abroad with a view to a less adventurous profession. At the age of nineteen, or thereabouts, I found myself at Edinburgh University to study for a Bachelor of Science degree, and the first face I saw in Professor Geikie's lecture room for geology was that of my old school-friend of the "Other Places," Julius LeVallon.