taking my hold-all for a pillow go
out to the grasshoppers for the night. In spite of the waiter's
assertion, made for the glory of the house, that this was the one room
unoccupied, I saw other rooms, perhaps smaller but certainly vacant,
lurking in his eye; therefore I said firmly, 'Show me something else.'

The house was nearly all at my disposal I found. It is roomy, and there
were hardly a dozen people staying in it, I chose a room with windows
opening into the portico, through whose white columns I would be able to
see a series of peaceful country pictures as I lay in bed. The boards
were bare and the bed was covered with another of those parti-coloured
quilts that suggest a desire to dissemble spots rather than wash them
out. The Greek temple was certainly primitive, and would hardly appeal
to any but the simplest, meekest of tourists. I hope I am simple and
meek. I felt as though I must be as I looked round this room and knew
that of my own free will I was going to sleep in it; and not only sleep
in it but be very happy in it. It was the series of pictures between the
columns that had fascinated me.

While Gertrud was downstairs superintending the bringing up of the
luggage, I leaned out of one of my windows and examined the delights. I
was quite close to the blue and white squares of the portico's ceiling;
and looking down I saw its grass-grown pavement, and the head of a
pensive tourist drinking beer just beneath me. Here again big lilac
bushes planted at intervals between the columns did duty for orange
trees. The north end framed the sky and fields and distant church; the
south end had a picture of luminous water shining through beech leaves;
the pair of columns in front enclosed the chestnut-lined road we had
come along and the outermost white houses of Putbus among dark trees
against the sunset on high ground behind; through those on the left was
the sea, hardly sea here at all the bay is so sheltered, and hardly salt
at all, for grass and rushes, touched just then by the splendour of
light into a transient divine brightness, lay all along the shore.
'Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to
behold the sun,' I thought; aloud, I suppose, for Gertrud coming in with
the hold-all said 'Did the gracious one speak?'

Quite unable to repeat this rapturous conviction to Gertrud, I changed
it into a modest request that she should order supper.

How often in these grey autumn days have