clean, the woodwork sound and well cared for. I sat down upon the
sun-warmed bank beside the gate and thought. Here was solitude indeed;
a dozen neighbours in all, simple labouring folk:

The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

Here, too, was beauty in excess; a glen untrodden by the feet of
tourists, moorland and pine-wood, a stream that lifted up a cheerful
voice, hills and mountains of delightful form and colour, and not far
away the silver gleam of lakes. In all external features it was my
dream come true, and the deep-bosomed woman at my side, with her face
of rosy, placid health, was herself the proof of how lightly the wings
of time passed over this haunt of ancient peace.

I suppose that no one ever approaches the realisation of his hopes
without a kind of fear. In those imaginary dramas which we invent and
rehearse perpetually in the silent theatre of our own minds, we always
take care that we get the best of the situation and the dialogue. The
dramas of real life are apt to end differently. The coveted occasion
finds us incapable; a baffling scepticism of our own powers leaves us
impotent; the part that ran so easily, with such unanimous applause,
when we were both the dramatist and the actor, suddenly bristles with a
hundred unsuspected difficulties. For the first time, as I sat on that
sunny bank, I began to ask myself whether I could really play the part
I had so long desired to play. Could I reconcile myself to seclusion
so entire? Would not this weight of utter silence grow heavier than I
could bear? It was not always June, I told myself, and there were days
of lashing rain, grey skies, and 'death-dumb autumn dripping' fog to
think of. The vision of lighted streets and bustling crowds, the warm
contiguity of numbers, the long lines of windows all aglow at evening,
the genial stir and tumult of congregated life, took masterful
possession of my mind. Could I bear to relinquish the familiar scene?
A thousand threads of use and habit bound me to it, each in itself as
light as gossamer, but the whole tough as cords of steel. I foresaw
that I had underestimated the ease of my deliverance. It would
require a strength of consistent resolution of which perhaps I was not
capable. It was but too likely that I should be one of those who put
their hand to the plough and look back, a reluctant recruit of a cause
that won my faith, but could not win my