accomplished, watching and
helping them under high heaven. It isn't so VERY hard. Rather good in
some ways. Some people HAVE to be broken a little. Can you see Altiora
down there, by any chance?"

"She's too little to be seen," she said.

"Can you see the sins they once committed?"

"I can only see you here beside me, dear--for ever. For all my life,
dear, till I die. Was that--the sin?"...

I took her to the station, and after she had gone I was to drive to
Dover, and cross to Calais by the night boat. I couldn't, I felt, return
to London. We walked over the crest and down to the little station of
Martin Mill side by side, talking at first in broken fragments, for the
most part of unimportant things.

"None of this," she said abruptly, "seems in the slightest degree real
to me. I've got no sense of things ending."

"We're parting," I said.

"We're parting--as people part in a play. It's distressing. But I don't
feel as though you and I were really never to see each other again for
years. Do you?"

I thought. "No," I said.

"After we've parted I shall look to talk it over with you."

"So shall I."

"That's absurd."

"Absurd."

"I feel as if you'd always be there, just about where you are now.
Invisible perhaps, but there. We've spent so much of our lives joggling
elbows."...

"Yes. Yes. I don't in the least realise it. I suppose I shall begin to
when the train goes out of the station. Are we wanting in imagination,
Isabel?"

"I don't know. We've always assumed it was the other way about."

"Even when the train goes out of the station--! I've seen you into so
many trains."

"I shall go on thinking of things to say to you--things to put in your
letters. For years to come. How can I ever stop thinking in that way
now? We've got into each other's brains."

"It isn't real," I said; "nothing is real. The world's no more than a
fantastic dream. Why are we parting, Isabel?"

"I don't know. It seems now supremely silly. I suppose we have to. Can't
we meet?--don't you think we shall meet even in dreams?"

"We'll meet a thousand times in dreams," I said.

"I wish we could dream at the same time," said Isabel.... "Dream walks.
I can't believe, dear, I shall never have a walk with you again."

"If I'd stayed six months in America," I said, "we might have walked
long walks and talked long talks for all our lives."

"Not in a world of Baileys," said Isabel. "And anyhow--"

She stopped short. I looked i