sun was looking full
at Torhaven's High Street, which runs south and downhill steeply to the
quay; a schooner filled the bottom of the street that day. Anything a not
too unreasonable man could desire was offered in the shops of that
thoroughfare. This being a time of change, when our thoughts are all
unfixed and we have had rumours of the New Jerusalem, the side window of
a fashionable jeweller's was devoted to tiny jade pigs, minute dolls,
silver acorns, and other propitiators of luck which time and experience
have tested. Next door to the jeweller's was a studio supporting the
arts, with local pottery shaped as etiolated blue cats and yellow
puppies; and there one could get picture postcards of the London
favourites in revue, and some water-colour paintings of the local coast
which an advertisement affirmed were real.

That was not all. Opposite was the one bookshop of the town. Its famous
bay front and old diamond panes frankly presented the new day with
ladies' handbags, ludo and other games, fountain pens, mounted texts from
Ella Wilcox, local guide books, and apparently a complete series--as much
as the length of the window would hold, at least--of Hall Caine's works;
and in one corner prayer-books in a variety of bindings.

Down on the quay, sitting on a bollard, with one leg stretched stiffly
before him, was a young native I had not met since one day on the Menin
Road. I had known him, before that strange occasion, as an ardent student
of life and letters. He had entered a profession in which sound learning
is essential, though the reward is slight, just when the War began. Then
he believed, in high seriousness, as young and enthusiastic students
did, all he was told in that August; and his professional career is now
over.

He pointed out to me mildly, and with a little reproach, that I was wrong
in supposing Torhaven had not changed. I learned that the War had made a
great change there. Motor-cars were now as commonly owned as bicycles
used to be, though he admitted that it did not seem that the queue
waiting to buy books, our sort of books, was in need of control by the
police. But farmers who had been tenants when Germany violated the
independence of Belgium were now freeholders. Men who were in essential
industries, and so could not be spared for the guns, were now shipowners.
We could see for ourselves how free and encouraging was the new wealth in
this new world; true, the size of his pension did not fa