ows. I no longer make out the familiar trees
and hedges, and forget how cold it is and how dreary.

"Je marcherai les yeux fixes sur mes pensees,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit--
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbe, les mains croisees:
Triste--et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit."

(This is Victor Hugo, not Barty Josselin.)

It's really far away I am--across the sea; across the years, O
Posthumus! in a sunny play-ground that has been built over long ago,
or overgrown with lawns and flower-beds and costly shrubs.

Up rises some vague little rudiment of a hint of a ghost of a sunny,
funny old French remembrance long forgotten--a brand-new old
remembrance--a kind of will-o'-the-wisp. Chut! my soul stalks it on
tiptoe, while these earthly legs bear this poor old body of clay, by
mere reflex action, straight home to the beautiful Elisabethan house
on the hill; through the great warm hall, up the broad oak stairs,
into the big cheerful music-room like a studio--ruddy and bright
with the huge log-fire opposite the large window. All is on an ample
scale at Marsfield, people and things! and I! sixteen stone, good
Lord!

How often that window has been my beacon on dark nights! I used to
watch for it from the train--a landmark in a land of milk and
honey--the kindliest light that ever led me yet on earth.

I sit me down in my own particular chimney-corner, in my own
cane-bottomed chair by the fender, and stare at the blaze with my friend
the mastiff. An old war-battered tomcat Barty was fond of jumps up and
makes friends too. There goes my funny little French remembrance, trying
to fly up the chimney like a burnt love-letter....

Barty's eldest daughter (Roberta), a stately, tall Hebe in black,
brings me a very sizable cup of tea, just as I like it. A well-grown
little son of hers, a very Ganymede, beau comme le jour, brings me a
cigarette, and insists on lighting it for me himself. I like that
too.

Another daughter of Barty's, "la rossignolle," as we call
her--though there is no such word that I know of--goes to the piano
and sings little French songs of forty, fifty years ago--songs that
she has learnt from her dear papa.

Heavens! what a voice! and how like his, but for the difference of
sex and her long and careful training (which he never had); and the
accent, how perfect!

Then suddenly:

"A Saint-Blaize, a la Zuecca ...
Vous etiez, vous etiez bien aise!