Pleasure Reading 6. Chapter 6-7

Maugham met Larry by chance at a play performance. Larry told about his life in Germany, and how he had spent some months in a monastery in Alsace. But he was not satisfied with the answers given to his spiritual questions by the monks. He returned to Paris and then traveled to Spain, where he lived in Seville with a girl. Then he traveled to India. He was fascinated by Indian spirituality and made his way to the holy city of Benares and later to a place called Madura. He absorbed the Vedantic philosophy of reincarnation and liberation. Eventually he became a disciple of the renowned saint, Shri Ganesha. When he had been at the guru's ashram for two years, he had a mystical experience one morning at sunrise. Larry then decided to return to Europe. He told Maugham that he now intended to return to America, got a job as a car mechanic and lived with calmness and compassion. Eventually he planed to settle in New York, where there were lots of libraries, and became a taxi driver. Six months later, Sophie MacDonald had her throat cut and was thrown into the river in Toulon. Maugham was asked by the police to identify the body. Larry is there also. He informs Maugham that he has got rid of all his money and has booked his passage on a ship leaving for America from Marseille. Gray and Isabel were also returning to America. Using Isabel's capital, Gray was getting back into business as vice-president of an oil company in Dallas, Texas. Maugham didn't see Larry, Isabel or Gray again, but he assumed that the Maturins were happily settled in Dallas and that Larry was pursuing exactly the life that pleased him.