little while the zenith would spout shooting stars. Some,
it was hoped, would reach the earth and be available for analysis.

That, science said, would be all. The green clouds would whirl and
vanish, and there might be thunderstorms. But through the attenuated
wisps of comet shine, the old sky, the old stars, would reappear,
and all would be as it had been before. And since this was to happen
between one and eleven in the morning of the approaching Tuesday--I
slept at Monkshampton on Saturday night,--it would be only partially
visible, if visible at all, on our side of the earth. Perhaps, if
it came late, one would see no more than a shooting star low down
in the sky. All this we had with the utmost assurances of science.
Still it did not prevent the last nights being the most beautiful
and memorable of human experiences.

The nights had become very warm, and when next day I had ranged
Shaphambury in vain, I was greatly tormented, as that unparalleled
glory of the night returned, to think that under its splendid
benediction young Verrall and Nettie made love to one another.

I walked backward and forward, backward and forward, along the sea
front, peering into the faces of the young couples who promenaded,
with my hand in my pocket ready, and a curious ache in my heart
that had no kindred with rage. Until at last all the promenaders
had gone home to bed, and I was alone with the star.

My train from Wyvern to Shaphambury that morning was a whole hour
late; they said it was on account of the movement of troops to meet
a possible raid from the Elbe.

Section 2

Shaphambury seemed an odd place to me even then. But something was
quickening in me at that time to feel the oddness of many accepted
things. Now in the retrospect I see it as intensely queer. The whole
place was strange to my untraveled eyes; the sea even was strange.
Only twice in my life had I been at the seaside before, and then
I had gone by excursion to places on the Welsh coast whose great
cliffs of rock and mountain backgrounds made the effect of the horizon
very different from what it is upon the East Anglian seaboard. Here
what they call a cliff was a crumbling bank of whitey-brown earth
not fifty feet high.

So soon as I arrived I made a systematic exploration of Shaphambury.
To this day I retain the clearest memories of the plan I shaped
out then, and how my inquiries were incommoded by the overpowering
desire of every one to talk of the c