eat square farm-homesteads, white,
red-roofed, with their out-buildings, stood naked amid the lands,
without screen or softening. There was something big and exposed about
it all. No more the cosy English ambushed life, no longer the cosy
littleness of the landscape. A bigness--and nothing to shelter the
unshrinking spirit. It was all exposed, exposed to the sweep of plain,
to the high, strong sky, and to human gaze. A kind of boldness, an
indifference. Aaron was impressed and fascinated. He looked with
new interest at the Italians in the carriage with him--for this same
boldness and indifference and exposed gesture. And he found it in them,
too. And again it fascinated him. It seemed so much bigger, as if the
walls of life had fallen. Nay, the walls of English life will have to
fall.

Sitting there in the third-class carriage, he became happy again. The
_presence_ of his fellow-passengers was not so hampering as in England.
In England, everybody seems held tight and gripped, nothing is left
free. Every passenger seems like a parcel holding his string as fast as
he can about him, lest one corner of the wrapper should come undone
and reveal what is inside. And every other passenger is forced, by
the public will, to hold himself as tight-bound also. Which in the end
becomes a sort of self-conscious madness.

But here, in the third class carriage, there was no tight string round
every man. They were not all trussed with self-conscious string as tight
as capons. They had a sufficient amount of callousness and indifference
and natural equanimity. True, one of them spat continually on the floor,
in large spits. And another sat with his boots all unlaced and his
collar off, and various important buttons undone. They did not seem to
care if bits of themselves did show, through the gaps in the wrapping.
Aaron winced--but he preferred it to English tightness. He was pleased,
he was happy with the Italians. He thought how generous and natural they
were.

So the towns passed by, and the hours, and he seemed at last to have got
outside himself and his old conditions. It seemed like a great escape.
There was magic again in life--real magic. Was it illusion, or was it
genuine? He thought it was genuine, and opened his soul a if there was
no danger.

Lunch-time came. Francis summoned Aaron down the rocking tram. The
three men had a table to themselves, and all felt they were enjoying
themselves very much indeed. Of course Francis