,
Templeton, troubled their head about my fancies. I don't imagine that
Musgrave noticed that anything was the matter with me. If I was silent,
he merely thought I had nothing to say; he took for granted I was in my
normal state, and the result was that I temporarily recovered it.

Then, too, the kind of talk I got was a relief. With women, the real
talk is intime talk; the world of politics, books, men, facts,
incidents, is merely a setting; and when they talk about them, it is
merely to pass the time, as a man turns to a game. At Hapton, Musgrave
chatted away about his neighbours, his boys' club, his new organ, his
bishop, his work. I used to think him rather a proser; how I blessed
his prosing now! I took long walks with him; he asked a few perfunctory
questions about my books, but otherwise he was quite content to prattle
on, like a little brook, about all that was in his mind, and he was
more than content if I asked an occasional question or assented
courteously. Then we had some good talks about the rural problems of
education--he is a sensible and intelligent man enough--and some
excellent arguments about the movement of religion, where I found him
unexpectedly liberal-minded. He left me to do very much what I liked. I
read in the mornings and before dinner; and after dinner we smoked or
even played a game of dummy whist. It is a pretty part of the country,
and when he was occupied in the afternoon, I walked about by myself.
From first to last not a single word fell from Musgrave to indicate
that he thought me in any way different, or suspected that I was not
perfectly content, with the blessed result that I immediately became
exactly what he thought me.

I got on no better with my writing; my brain is as bare as a winter
wood; but I found that I did not rebel against that. Of course it does
not reveal a very dignified temperament, that one should so take colour
from one's surroundings. If I can be equable and good-humoured here, I
ought to be able to be equable and good-humoured at home; at the same
time I am conscious of an intense longing to see Maud and the children.
Probably I should do better to absent myself resolutely from home at
stated intervals; and I think it argued a fine degree of perception in
Maud, that she decided not to accompany me, though she was pressed to
come. I am going home to-morrow, delighted at the thought, grateful to
the good Musgrave, in a more normal frame of mind than I have been