ence. The sun on the grey rocks was giving a hint that, should
ever it be required, there was heat enough left to begin things anew. I
realized in alarm that such a morning of re-birth might be beautiful; for
I might not be there to sing _Laus Deo_. I might miss that fine morning.
There was a suggestion of leisure in the pattern of the lichen on the
granite; it gave the idea of prolonged yet still merely tentative efforts
at design. The lichen seemed to have complete assurance that there was
time enough for new work. The tough stems of the heather, into which I
put my hand, felt like the sinews of a body that was as ancient as the
other stars, but still so young that it was tranquilly fixed in the joy
of its first awakening, knowing very little yet, guessing nothing of its
beginning nor of its end; still infantile, with all life before it, its
voice merely the tiny shrilling of a grasshopper. The rocks were poised
so precariously above the quivering plain of the sea that they appeared
to tremble in mid-air, being things of no weight, in the rush of the
planet. The distant headlands and moors dilated under the generating sun.
It was then that I pulled Ecclesiastes out of my pocket, leaned against
the granite, and began:

"Vanity of vanities..."

I looked up again. There was a voice above me. An old goat, the
venerable image of all-knowledge, of sneering and bearded sin, was
contemplating me. It was a critical comment of his that I had heard.
Embarrassed, I put away my book.

XII. An Autumn Morning

SEPTEMBER 28, 1918. The way to my suburban station and the morning train
admonishes me sadly with its stream of season-ticket holders carrying
dispatch-cases, and all of them anxious, their resolute pace makes it
evident, for work. This morning two aeroplanes were over us in the blue,
in mimic combat; they were, of course, getting into trim for the raid
to-night, because the barometer is beautifully high and steady. But the
people on their way to the 9.30 did not look up at the flight. Life is
real, life is earnest. When I doubt that humanity knows what it is doing,
I get comfort from watching our local brigadiers and Whitehall ladies on
their way these tranquil Autumn mornings to give our planet another good
shove towards the millennium. Progress, progress! I hear their feet
overtaking me, brisk and resolute, as though a revelation had come to
them overnight, and so now they know what to do, undiverted by any doubt