All this happened twenty
years ago; perhaps the earth is over her charming little personality,
and it will be over me before long. Nothing endures; life is but
change. What we call death is only change. Death and life always
overlapping, mixed inextricably, and no meaning in anything, merely a
stream of change in which things happen. Sometimes the happenings are
pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, and in neither the pleasant nor the
unpleasant can we detect any purpose. Twenty long years ago, and there
is no hope, not a particle.
* * * * *
I have come to the end of my mood; an ache in my heart brings me to my
feet, and looking round I cry out: "How dark is the room! Why is there
no light? Bring in the lamp!"
CHAPTER XII
SUNDAY EVENING IN LONDON
Married folk always know, only the bachelor asks, "Where shall I dine?
Shall I spend two shillings in a chop-house, or five in my club, or
ten at the Cafe Royal?" For two or three more shillings one may sit on
the balcony of the Savoy, facing the spectacle of evening darkening on
the river, with lights of bridge and wharf and warehouse afloat in the
tide. Married folk know their bedfellows; bachelors, and perhaps
spinsters, are not so sure of theirs: this is a side issue which we
will not pursue; an allusion to it will suffice to bring before the
reader the radical difference between the lives of the married and the
unmarried.
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