I arrived, however, too late to be of any good if I could have been of any good. And then I had my first taste of English life. It was amazing. It was overwhelming. I never shal forget the polished cob that Edward, beside me, drove; the animal's action, its high-stepping, its skin that was like satin. And the peace! And the red cheeks! And the beautiful, beautiful old house. Just near Branshaw Teleragh it was and we descended on it from the high, clear, windswept waste of the New Forest. I tel you it was amazing to arrive there from Waterbury. And it came into my head--for Teddy Ashburnham, you remember, had cabled to me to "come and have a talk" with him--that it was unbelievable that anything essential y calamitous could happen to that place and those people. I tel you it was the very spirit of peace. And Leonora, beautiful and smiling, with her coils of yel ow hair, stood on the top doorstep, with a butler and footman and a maid or so behind her. And she just said: "So glad you've come," as if I'd run down to lunch from a town ten miles away, instead of having come half the world over at the cal of two urgent telegrams.

The girl was out with the hounds, I think. And that poor devil beside me was in an agony. Absolute, hopeless, dumb agony such as passes the mind of man to imagine. I I

IT was a very hot summer, in August, 1904; and Florence had already been taking the baths for a month. I don't know how it feels to be a patient at one of those places. I never was a patient anywhere. I daresay the patients get a home feeling and some sort of anchorage in the spot. They seem to like the bath attendants, with their cheerful faces, their air of authority, their white linen. But, for myself, to be at Nauheim gave me a sense-what shal I say?--a sense almost of nakedness--the nakedness that one feels on the sea-shore or in any great open space. I had no attachments, no accumulations. In one's own home it is as if little, innate sympathies draw one to particular chairs that seem to enfold one in an embrace, or take one along particular streets that seem friendly when enfold one in an embrace, or take one along particular streets that seem friendly when others may be hostile. And, believe me, that feeling is a very important part of life. I know it wel , that have been for so long a wanderer upon the face of public resorts. And one is too polished up. Heaven knows I was never an untidy man. But the feeling that I had when, whilst poor Florence was taking her morning bath, I stood upon the careful y swept steps of the Englischer Hof, looking at the careful y arranged trees in tubs upon the careful y arranged gravel whilst careful y arranged people walked past in careful y calculated gaiety, at the careful y calculated hour, the tal trees of the public gardens, going up to the right; the reddish stone of the baths--or were they white half-timber châlets? Upon my word I have forgotten, I who was there so often. That wil give you the measure of how much I was in the landscape. I could find my way blindfolded to the hot rooms, to the douche rooms, to the fountain in the centre of the quadrangle where the rusty water gushes out.