English girls
of various ages, and girl-children. The costumes had obviously been
fabricated by the artistes. The artistes could neither dance, pose,
group, make an entrance, make an exit, nor even smile. The ballets,
obviously fabricated by the same persons as the costumes, had no plot,
no beginning and no end. Crude amateurishness was the characteristic
of these honest and hard-working professionals, who somehow contrived
to be neither men nor women--and assuredly not epicene--but who
travelled from country town to country town in a glamour of posters,
exciting the towns, in spite of a perfect lack of sex, because they
were the fabled Russian dancers. The Moot Hall was crammed with adults
and their cackling offspring, who heartily applauded the show, which
indeed was billed as a "return visit" due to "terrific success" on a
previous occasion. "Is it not too marvellous," Concepcion had said.
He had admitted that it was. But the boredom had been excruciating.
In the street they had bought an evening paper of which he had never
before heard the name, to learn news of the war. The war, however,
seemed very far off; it had grown unreal. "We'll talk to-morrow,"
Concepcion had said, and gone abruptly to bed! Still, he had slept
well in the soft climate, to the everlasting murmur of the weir.

Then the Sunday. She was indisposed, could not come down to breakfast,
but hoped to come down to lunch, could not come down to lunch, but
hoped to come down to tea, could not come down to tea--and so on to
nightfall. The Sunday had been like a thousand years to him. He had
learnt the town, and the suburbs of it; the grass-grown streets, the
main thoroughfares, and the slums; by the afternoon he was recognising
familiar faces in the town. He had twice made the classic round--along
the cliffs, over the New Bridge (which was an antique), up the hill to
the castle, through the market-place, down the High Street to the
Old Bridge. He had explored the brain of the landlord, who could
not grapple with a time-table, and who spent most of the time during
closed hours in patiently bolting the front door which G.J. was
continually opening. He had talked to the old customer who, whenever
the house was open, sat at a table in the garden over a mug of cider.
He had played through all the musical comedies, dance albums and
pianoforte albums that littered the piano. He had read the same Sunday
papers that he read in the Albany. And he had learnt the li