ts imposed by his material. He pointed along the lower edge
of the roof: 'It ought to stick out,' he said, meaning that it wanted
eaves. I told him not to worry about that: it was the sand's fault, not
his. 'What really is a pity,' I said, 'is that your house can't last
for ever.' He was tracing now on the roof, with the edge of his spade, a
criss-cross pattern, to represent tiles, and he seemed to have forgotten
my presence and my kindness. 'Aren't you sorry,' I asked, raising my
voice rather sharply, 'that the sea is coming in?'

He glanced at the sea. 'Yes.' He said this with a lack of emphasis that
seemed to me noble though insincere.

The strain of talking in words of not more than three syllables had
begun to tell on me. I bade the artist good-bye, wandered away up the
half-dozen steps to the Parade, sat down on a bench, and opened the
morning paper that I had brought out unread. During the War one felt it
a duty to know the worst before breakfast; now that the English polity
is threatened merely from within, one is apt to dally.... Merely from
within? Is that a right phrase when the nerves of unrestful Labour
in any one land are interplicated with its nerves in any other, so
vibrantly? News of the dismissal of an erring workman in Timbuctoo is
enough nowadays to make us apprehensive of vast and dreadful effects on
our own immediate future. How pleasant if we had lived our lives in
the nineteenth century and no other, with the ground all firm under our
feet! True, the people who flourished then had recurring alarms. But
their alarms were quite needless; whereas ours--! Ours, as I glanced
at this morning' s news from Timbuctoo and elsewhere, seemed odiously
needful. Withal, our Old Nobility in its pleasaunces was treading
once more the old graceful measure which the War arrested; Bohemia
had resumed its motley; even the middle class was capering, very
noticeably... To gad about smiling as though he were quite well, thank
you, or to sit down, pull a long face, and make his soul,--which, I
wondered, is the better procedure for a man knowing that very soon
he will have to undergo a vital operation at the hands of a wholly
unqualified surgeon who dislikes him personally? I inclined to think the
gloomier way the less ghastly. But then, I asked myself, was my analogy
a sound one? We are at the mercy of Labour, certainly; and Labour does
not love us; and Labour is not deeply versed in statecraft. But would
an unskilled s