earth could it mean? For fifteen seconds or so I stared at the
Vision . . . and so the train joggled past it and rapt it from my
eyes.

I can understand now the ancient stories of men who, having by hap
surprised the goddesses bathing, never recovered from the shock but
thereafter ran wild in the woods with their memories.

At the next station I alighted. It chanced to be the station for
which I had taken my ticket; but anyhow I should have alighted there.
The spell of the vision was upon me. The Norman porch might wait.
It is (as I have said) used to waiting, and in fact it has waited.
I have not yet made another holiday to visit it. Whether or no the
market-women and the local policeman had beheld, I know not. I hope
not, but now shall never know. . . . The engine-driver, leaning in
converse with the station-master, and jerking a thumb backward, had
certainly beheld. But I passed him with averted eyes, gave up my
ticket, and struck straight across country for the spot.

I came to it, as my watch told me, at twenty minutes after five.
The afternoon sunlight still lay broad on the meadow. The place was
unchanged save for a lengthening of its oak-tree shadows. But the
persons of my Vision--naked gods and navvies--had vanished. Only the
cattle stood, knee-deep in the pool, lazily swishing their tails in
protest against the flies; and the cattle could tell me nothing.


Just a fortnight later, as I spent at St. Blazey junction the forty
odd minutes of repentance ever thoughtfully provided by our railway
company for those who, living in Troy, are foolish enough to travel,