, seized a bag in
either hand, and had to put them down again in order to open the door.
When at last he had safely bundled himself and his baggage on to the
platform, he ran up the train towards the van.

"A bicycle, a bicycle!" he said breathlessly to the guard. He felt
himself a man of action. The guard paid no attention, but continued
methodically to hand out, one by one, the packages labelled to Camlet.
"A bicycle!" Denis repeated. "A green machine, cross-framed, name of
Stone. S-T-O-N-E."

"All in good time, sir," said the guard soothingly. He was a large,
stately man with a naval beard. One pictured him at home, drinking tea,
surrounded by a numerous family. It was in that tone that he must have
spoken to his children when they were tiresome. "All in good time, sir."
Denis's man of action collapsed, punctured.

He left his luggage to be called for later, and pushed off on his
bicycle. He always took his bicycle when he went into the country. It
was part of the theory of exercise. One day one would get up at six
o'clock and pedal away to Kenilworth, or Stratford-on-Avon--anywhere.
And within a radius of twenty miles there were always Norman churches
and Tudor mansions to be seen in the course of an afternoon's excursion.
Somehow they never did get seen, but all the same it was nice to feel
that the bicycle was there, and that one fine morning one really might
get up at six.

Once at the top of the long hill which led up from Camlet station, he
felt his spirits mounting. The world, he found, was good. The far-away
blue hills, the harvests whitening on the slopes of the ridge along
which his road led him, the treeless sky-lines that changed as he
moved--yes, they were all good. He was overcome by the beauty of those
deeply embayed combes, scooped in the flanks of the ridge beneath him.
Curves, curves: he repeated the word slowly, trying as he did so to find
some term in which to give expression to his appreciation. Curves--no,
that was inadequate. He made a gesture with his hand, as though to scoop
the achieved expression out of the air, and almost fell off his bicycle.
What was the word to describe the curves of those little valleys? They
were as fine as the lines of a human body, they were informed with the
subtlety of art...

Galbe. That was a good word; but it was French. Le galbe evase de ses
hanches: had one ever read a French novel in which that phrase didn't
occur? Some day he would compile a dictionar