second silent unconscious kiss. On Sunday morning they would be
freighted with a quiet whiter light, more peaceful and hushed to the
feeling of the day, and somehow the peace was guarded with finger on
lip throughout the house, so that it was implicit in my nest of images
long before reason took note of it or sought to explain it to my
consciousness. Once again as a boy of fifteen I knew it with a catch
of delighted and almost tearful surprise when I stroked the breast of
a wounded pigeon who found shelter in my room. The world is not as
quiet in these days, nor is the hum of traffic in the mart attuned so
kindly to the flow of light as when it ran so gently by the bedside of
the dreaming boy. ...

(The journal now follows, written in a small cramped hand, without
paragraphing or division. I omit the first few entries as purely
personal. Middleton had gone to a group of remote western islands, and
these notes are the fruit of his sojourn there.)--THE EDITOR.


July 5.

Yesterday found me on the island with its silences, and last night the
host was red and sacrificial and rode on a thunder cloud. This
afternoon the planets go singing through my flesh and my song of
praise has widened to the arches of the sun. The sea is moaning slowly
on the sand. I stripped to the cool salt air for the first time. ...
Walking I found my way out on the long gray dunes.

July 6.

On the dunes today with my mother. My hand swept idly over the soft