there. I opened it, and it contained a magnificently-bound copy of _The
Imitation of Christ_. Upon the flyleaf was written: 'To dearest Carlotta
on attaining her majority. With fondest love. C.P.'

It was too much; it was overwhelming. I wept again. Soul so kind and
pure! The sense of my loss, the sense of the simple, proud rectitude of
her life, laid me low.




V


Train journeys have too often been sorrowful for me, so much so that the
conception itself of a train, crawling over the country like a snake, or
flying across it like a winged monster, fills me with melancholy. Trains
loaded with human parcels of sadness and illusion and brief joy,
wandering about, crossing, and occasionally colliding in the murk of
existence; trains warmed and lighted in winter; trains open to catch the
air of your own passage in summer; night-trains that pierce the night
with your yellow, glaring eyes, and waken mysterious villages, and leave
the night behind and run into the dawn as into a station; trains that
carry bread and meats for the human parcels, and pillows and fountains of
fresh water; trains that sweep haughtily and wearily indifferent through
the landscapes and the towns, sufficient unto yourselves, hasty, panting,
formidable, and yet mournful entities: I have understood you in your
arrogance and your pathos.

That little journey from Knype to Shawport had implanted itself painfully