other and son. Who are you?
Why do you walk down the street? Where to-night will you sleep, and
then, to-morrow? Oh, how it whirls and surges--floats me afresh! I start
after them. People drive this way and that. The white light splutters
and pours. Plate-glass windows. Carnations; chrysanthemums. Ivy in dark
gardens. Milk carts at the door. Wherever I go, mysterious figures, I
see you, turning the corner, mothers and sons; you, you, you. I hasten,
I follow. This, I fancy, must be the sea. Grey is the landscape; dim as
ashes; the water murmurs and moves. If I fall on my knees, if I go
through the ritual, the ancient antics, it's you, unknown figures, you I
adore; if I open my arms, it's you I embrace, you I draw to me--adorable
world!

THE STRING QUARTET

Well, here we are, and if you cast your eye over the room you will see
that Tubes and trams and omnibuses, private carriages not a few, even, I
venture to believe, landaus with bays in them, have been busy at it,
weaving threads from one end of London to the other. Yet I begin to have
my doubts--

If indeed it's true, as they're saying, that Regent Street is up, and
the Treaty signed, and the weather not cold for the time of year, and
even at that rent not a flat to be had, and the worst of influenza its
after effects; if I bethink me of having forgotten to write about the
leak in the larder, and left my glove in the train; if the ties of blood
require me, leaning forward, to accept cordially the hand which is
perhaps offered hesitatingly--

"Seven years since we met!"

"The last time in Venice."

"And where are you living now?"

"Well, the late afternoon suits me the best, though, if it weren't
asking too much----"

"But I knew you at once!"

"Still, the war made a break----"

If the mind's shot through by such little arrows, and--for human society
compels it--no sooner is one launched than another presses forward; if
this engenders heat and in addition they've turned on the electric
light; if saying one thing does, in so many cases, leave behind it a
need to improve and revise, stirring besides regrets, pleasures,
vanities, and desires--if it's all the facts I mean, and the hats, the
fur boas, the gentlemen's swallow-tail coats, and pearl tie-pins that
come to the surface--what chance is there?

Of what? It becomes every minute more difficult to say why, in spite of
everything, I sit here believing I can't now say what, or even remember
the la