st gleam of the high
road a curious and definite feeling came upon me. Now I suddenly
felt something much more practical and extraordinary--the absence of
humanity: inhuman loneliness. Of course, there was nothing really lost
in my state; but the mood may hit one anywhere. I wanted men--any men;
and I felt our awful alliance over all the globe. And at last, when I
had walked for what seemed a long time, I saw a light too near the earth
to mean anything except the image of God.

I came out on a clear space and a low, long cottage, the door of which
was open, but was blocked by a big grey horse, who seemed to prefer to
eat with his head inside the sitting-room. I got past him, and found
he was being fed by a young man who was sitting down and drinking beer
inside, and who saluted me with heavy rustic courtesy, but in a strange
tongue. The room was full of staring faces like owls, and these I traced
at length as belonging to about six small children. Their father was
still working in the fields, but their mother rose when I entered. She
smiled, but she and all the rest spoke some rude language, Flamand, I
suppose; so that we had to be kind to each other by signs. She fetched
me beer, and pointed out my way with her finger; and I drew a picture
to please the children; and as it was a picture of two men hitting each
other with swords, it pleased them very much. Then I gave a Belgian
penny to each child, for as I said on chance in French, "It must be that
we have the economic equality." But they had never heard of economic
equality, while all Battersea workmen have heard of economic equality,
though it is true that they haven't got it.

I found my way back to the city, and some time afterwards I actually
saw in the street my two men talking, no doubt still saying, one that
Science had changed all in Humanity, and the other that Humanity was now
pushing the wings of the purely intellectual. But for me Humanity was
hooked on to an accidental picture. I thought of a low and lonely house
in the flats, behind a veil or film of slight trees, a man breaking the
ground as men have broken from the first morning, and a huge grey horse
champing his food within a foot of a child's head, as in the stable
where Christ was born.

XXX. The Little Birds Who Won't Sing

On my last morning on the Flemish coast, when I knew that in a few hours
I should be in England, my eye fell upon one of the details of Gothic
carving of which Flande