{"product_id":"2940013678699","title":"The Misanthrope","description":"Since I have returned from the rock and discussed the story in all its\u003cbr\u003ebearings, I have begun to wonder if the man made a fool of me. In the\u003cbr\u003edeeps of my consciousness I feel that he did not.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNevertheless, I cannot resist the effect of all the laughter that has\u003cbr\u003ebeen evoked by my narrative.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere on the mainland the whole thing seems unlikely, grotesque,\u003cbr\u003efoolish. On the rock the man's confession carried absolute conviction.\u003cbr\u003eThe setting is everything; and I am, perhaps, thankful that my present\u003cbr\u003ecircumstances are so beautifully conducive to sanity. No one\u003cbr\u003eappreciates the mystery of life more than I do; but when the mystery\u003cbr\u003einvolves such a doubt of oneself, I find it pleasanter to forget.\u003cbr\u003eNaturally, I do not want to believe the story. If I did I should know\u003cbr\u003emyself to be some kind of human horror. And the terror of it all lies\u003cbr\u003ein the fact that I may never know precisely what kind...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore I went we had eliminated the facile and banal explanation that\u003cbr\u003ethe man was mad, and had fallen back upon the two inevitable\u003cbr\u003ealternatives: Crime and Disappointed Love. We were human and romantic,\u003cbr\u003eand we tried desperately hard not to be too obvious.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce before a man had made the same attempt and had built or tried to\u003cbr\u003ebuild a house on the Gulland rock; but he had been defeated within a\u003cbr\u003efortnight, and what was left of his building was taken off the island\u003cbr\u003eand turned into a tin church. It is there still. We all went to\u003cbr\u003eTrevone and ruminated over and round it, perhaps with some faint hope\u003cbr\u003ethat one of us might, all-unknowing, have the abilities of a\u003cbr\u003epsychometrist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNothing came of that visit but a slight intensification of those\u003cbr\u003etheories that were already becoming a little stale. We compared the\u003cbr\u003eearly failure of thirty years ago, the attempt that was baffled, with\u003cbr\u003ethe present success. For this new misanthrope had lived on the Gulland\u003cbr\u003ethrough the whole winter--and still lived. Indeed, the fact of his\u003cbr\u003epresence on that awful lump of rock was now accepted by the country\u003cbr\u003epeople; to them he was scarcely a shade madder than the other\u003cbr\u003evisitors; that remunerative, recurrent host that this year broke their\u003cbr\u003ejourney to Bedruthan in order to stand on Trevone beach and stare\u003cbr\u003efoolishly at the just visible hut that stuck like a cubical gall on\u003cbr\u003ethe landward face of that humped, desolate island.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070189519088,"sku":"2940013678699","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013678699_p0.jpg?v=1763584390","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013678699","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}