rash proposal, "in travelling along roads you don't know and seeing
houses and parks and villages and towns for which you do not feel in
the slightest degree responsible. They hide all their troubles from the
road. Their backyards are tucked away out of sight, they show a brave
face; there's none of the nasty self-betrayals of the railway approach.
And everything will be fresh still. There will still be a lot of
apple-blossom--and bluebells.... And all the while we can be getting on
with your affair."

He was back at the window now. "I want the holiday myself," he said.

He addressed Sir Richmond over his shoulder. "Have you noted how fagged
and unstable EVERYBODY is getting? Everybody intelligent, I mean."

"It's an infernally worrying time."

"Exactly. Everybody suffers."

"It's no GOOD going on in the old ways--"

"It isn't. And it's a frightful strain to get into any new ways. So here
we are.

"A man," the doctor expanded, "isn't a creature in vacuo. He's himself
and his world. He's a surface of contact, a system of adaptations,
between his essential self and his surroundings. Well, our surroundings
have become--how shall I put it?--a landslide. The war which seemed
such a definable catastrophe in 1914 was, after all, only the first loud
crack and smash of the collapse. The war is over and--nothing is over.
This peace is a farce, reconstruction an exploded phrase. The slide goes