e,
the accursed mechanical ideal gains day by day over the spontaneous
life-dynamic, so that Italy becomes as idea-bound and as automatic as
England: just a business proposition.

Coming to the station, he went inside. There he saw a money-changing
window which was open, so he planked down a five-pound note and got
two-hundred-and-ten lire. Here was a start. At a bookstall he saw a
man buy a big timetable with a large railway map in it. He immediately
bought the same. Then he retired to a corner to get his whereabouts.

In the morning he must move: where? He looked on the map. The map seemed
to offer two alternatives, Milan and Genoa. He chose Milan, because of
its musical associations and its cathedral. Milano then. Strolling and
still strolling, he found the boards announcing Arrivals and Departures.
As far as he could make out, the train for Milan left at 9:00 in the
morning.

So much achieved, he left the big desolating caravanserai of the
station. Soldiers were camped in every corner, lying in heaps asleep.
In their grey-green uniform, he was surprised at their sturdy limbs and
uniformly short stature. For the first time, he saw the cock-feathers
of the Bersaglieri. There seemed a new life-quality everywhere. Many
worlds, not one world. But alas, the one world triumphing more and
more over the many worlds, the big oneness swallowing up the many
small diversities in its insatiable gnawing appetite, leaving a dreary
sameness throughout the world, that means at last complete sterility.

Aaron, however, was too new to the strangeness, he had no eye for the
horrible sameness that was spreading like a disease over Italy from
England and the north. He plunged into the space in front of the
station, and took a new, wide boulevard. To his surprise he ran towards
a big and over-animated statue that stood resolutely with its back to
the magnificent snow-domes of the wild Alps. Wolves in the street
could not have startled him more than those magnificent fierce-gleaming
mountains of snow at the street-end, beyond the statue. He stood and
wondered, and never thought to look who the gentleman was. Then he
turned right round, and began to walk home.

Luncheon was at one o'clock. It was half-past twelve when he rang at
the lodge gates. He climbed through the leaves of the little park, on a
side-path, rather reluctantly towards the house. In the hall Lady Franks
was discussing with Arthur a fat Pekinese who did not seem very we