h the one she considers the winning side (Gott strafe her!), and
Greece is still wondering what to do! Thank God, I belong to a race that
is full of primitive instincts! Poor old England still barges in
whenever there is a fight going on, and gets her head knocked, and goes
on fighting just the same, and never knows that she is heroic, but
blunders on--simple-hearted, stupid, sublime!

_24 October._--I went to the English church this morning with Mr.
Lancelot Smith, but there was no service as the chaplain had
chicken-pox! So I came home and packed, and then lunched with Mr. Eric
Hambro, Mr. Lancelot Smith, and Mr. ----, all rather interesting men at
this crisis, when four nations at least are undecided what to do in the
matter of the war.

About 6 o'clock we and our boxes got away from Stockholm. Our expenses
for the few days we spent there were L60, although we had very few meals
in the hotel. We had a long journey to Haparanda, where we stopped for a
day. The cold was terrible and we spent the day (my birthday) on a sort
of luggage barge on the river. On my last birthday we were bolting from
Furnes in front of the Germans, and the birthday before that I was on
the top of the Rocky Mountains.

Talking of the Rockies reminds me (did I need reminding) of Elsie
Northcote, my dear friend, who married and went to live there. The
other night some friends of mine gave me a little "send-off" before I
left London--dinner and the Palace Theatre, where I felt like a ghost
returned to earth. All the old lot were there as of yore--Viola Tree,
Lady Diana Manners, Harry Lindsay, the Raymond Asquiths, etc., etc. I
saw them all from quite far away. Lord Stanmore was in the box with us,
and he it was who told me of Elsie Northcote's sudden death. It wasn't
the right place to hear about it. Too many are gone or are going. My own
losses are almost stupefying; and something dead within myself looks
with sightless eyes on death; with groping hands I touch it sometimes,
and then I know that I am dead also.

[Page Heading: LOVE AND PAIN]

There is only one thing that one can never renounce, and that is love.
Love is part of one, and can't be given up. Love can't be separated from
one, even by death. It comes once and remains always. It is never
fulfilled; the fulfilment of love is its crucifixion; but it lives on
for ever in a passion-week of pain until pain itself grows dull; and
then one wishes one had been born quite a common little