He did not miss one of the shots
fired during the forenoon, and when he met the other people who sat down
with him at the midday dinner in the hotel, his talk with them was
naturally of the morning's practice. They one and all declared it a
great nuisance, and said that it had shattered their nerves terribly,
which was not perhaps so strange, since they were all women. But when
they asked him in his quality of nervous wreck whether he had not
suffered from the prolonged and repeated explosions, too, he found
himself able to say no, that he had enjoyed every moment of the firing.
He added that he did not believe he had even noticed the noise after the
first shot, he was so wholly taken with the beauty of the fountain-burst
from the sea which followed; and as he spoke the fan-like spray rose and
expanded itself before his eyes, quite blotting out the visage of a
young widow across the table. In his swift recognition of the fact and
his reflection upon it, he realized that the effect was quite as if he
had been looking at some intense light, almost as if he had been looking
at the sun, and that the illusion which had blotted out the agreeable
reality opposite was of the quality of those flying shapes which repeat
themselves here, there, and everywhere that one looks, after lifting the
gaze from a dazzling object.
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