e one as unreal as the other--as alien. I seemed to have
passed an infinity of aeons beyond them. The one and the other belonged
as absolutely to the past as a past year belongs. The thought of them
did not bring with it the tremulously unpleasant sensations that, as a
rule, come with the thoughts of a too recent _temps jadis_, but rather
as a vein of rose across a gray evening. I had passed his letter over;
had dropped it half-read among the litter of the others. Then there had
seemed to be a haven into whose mouth I was drifting.

Now I should have to pick the letters up again, all of them; set to work
desolately to pick up the threads of the past; and work it back into
life as one does half-drowned things. I set about it listlessly. There
remained of that time an errand for my aunt, an errand that would take
me to Etchingham; something connected with her land steward. I think the
old lady had ideas of inducting me into a position that it had grown
tacitly acknowledged I was to fill. I was to go down there; to see about
some alterations that were in progress; and to make arrangements for my
aunt's return. I was so tired, so dog tired, and the day still had so
many weary hours to run, that I recognised instinctively that if I were
to come through it sane I must tire myself more, must keep on
going--until I sank. I drifted down to Etchingham that evening, I sent a
messenger over to Churchill's cottage, waited for an answer that told me
that Churchill was there, and then slept, and slept.

I woke back in the world again, in a world that contained the land
steward and the manor house. I had a sense of recovered power from the
sight of them, of the sunlight on the stretches of turf, of the mellow,
golden stonework of the long range of buildings, from the sound of a
chime of bells that came wonderfully sweetly over the soft swelling of
the close turf. The feeling came not from any sense of prospective
ownership, but from the acute consciousness of what these things stood
for. I did not recognise it then, but later I understood; for the
present it was enough to have again the power to set my foot on the
ground, heel first. In the streets of the little town there was a
sensation of holiday, not pronounced enough to call for flags, but
enough to convey the idea of waiting for an event.

The land steward, at the end of a tour amongst cottages, explained there
was to be a celebration in the neighbourhood--a "cock-and-hen show w