eeting old friends, of sicknesses, theatres, church services,
prostitutes, slums, cricket-matches, children, rides on a tram, baths
on a hot morning, sudden unpleasant truth from a friend, momentary
consciousness of God....

Death too.... How clear now it was to me! During these weeks I had
wondered, pursued the thought of Death. Was it this? Was it that? Was
it pain? Was it terror? I had feared it, as for instance when I had
seen the dead bodies in the Forest, or stood under the rain at
Nijnieff. I had laughed at it as when I had gone with the sanitars. I
had cursed it as when Marie Ivanovna had died. I had sought it as I
had done last night--and always, as I drew closer and closer to it,
fancied it some fine allegorical figure, something terrible,
appalling, devastating.... How, when I was, as I believed, at last
face to face with it, I saw that one was simply face to face with
oneself.

Four hours I have been writing, and no sign of the wagons.... I am
writing everything down as I remember it, because these things are so
clear to me now and yet I know that afterwards they will be changed,
twisted.

I was drowsy. I saw Polchester High Street, Garth in Roselands,
Clinton, Truxe, best of all Rafiel. I went down the high white hill,
deep into the valley, then along the road beside the stream where the
houses begin, the hideous Wesleyan Chapel on my right, "Ebenezer
Villa" on my left, then the cottages with the gardens, then the little
street, the post-office, the butcher's, the turn of the road and,
suddenly, the bay with the fishing boats riding at anchor and beyond
the sea.... England and Russia! to their strong and confident union I
thought that I would give every drop of my blood, every beat of my
heart, and as I lay there I seemed to see on one side the deep green
lanes at Rafiel and on the other the shining canals, the little wooden
houses, the cobbler and the tufted trees of Petrograd, the sea coast
beyond Truxe and the wide snow-covered plains beyond Moscow, the
cathedral at Polchester and the Kremlin, breeding their children, to
the hundredth generation, for the same hopes, the same beliefs, the
same desires.

I slept in the sun and had happy dreams.

I have re-read these last pages and I find some very fine stuff
about--"giving every drop of blood," etc., etc. Of course I am not
that kind of man. Men, like Durward and myself--he resembles me in
many ways, although he is stronger than I am, and doesn't ca