down..." rose in some forgotten corner of my
mind, and my yearning that would be satisfied moved forth to catch the
notes.

"Listen, mother," I said, turning towards her.

She raised her head and smiled a little before reading the rest of the
letter that she held.

"I only pray they won't keep you awake, dear boy," she answered gently.
"They give us very little peace, I'm afraid, just now."

Perhaps she caught some expression in my face, for she added a trifle
more quickly: "That's the worst of the spring--our English spring--it
is so noisy!" Still smiling, she picked up her letter again, while I,
though still listening by the window, heard only the harsh scream and
rattle of the jungle voices, thousands and thousands of miles away
across the world.

VII

IT was some little time after my arrival, as I shall presently relate,
that the experience I call the thrill came to me in England--and,
like all its predecessors, came through Nature. It came, that is,
through the only apparatus I possessed as yet that could respond.

The point, I think, is of special interest; I note it now, on looking
back upon the series as a whole, though at the time I did not note
it.

For, compared with yourself at any rate, the aesthetic side of me is
somewhat raw; of pictures, sculpture, music I am untaught and
ignorant; with other Philistines, I "know what I like," but nothing
more. It is the honest but uncultured point of view. I am that
primitive thing, the mere male animal. It was my love of Nature,
therefore, that showed me beauty, since this was the only apparatus
in my temperament able to respond. Natural, simple things, as before,
were the channel through which beauty appealed to that latent store
of love and wisdom in me which, it almost seemed, were being slowly
educated.

The talks and intimacies with our mother, then, were largely over; the
re-knitting of an interrupted relationship was fairly accomplished;
she had asked her questions, and listened to my answers. All the
dropped threads had been picked up again, so that a pattern, similar
to the one laid aside, now lay spread more or less comfortably before
us. Outwardly, things seemed much as they were when I left home so
many years ago. One might have thought the interval had been one of
months, since her attitude refused to recognize all change, and
change, and growth, was abhorrent to her type. For whereas I had
altered, she had remained unmoved.

So unsatis