understands and appreciates.


DIES IRAE

Those memorable days that move in procession, their heads just
out of the mist of years long dead--the most of them are full-
eyed as the dandelion that from dawn to shade has steeped itself
in sunlight. Here and there in their ranks, however, moves a
forlorn one who is blind--blind in the sense of the dulled
window-pane on which the pelting raindrops have mingled and run
down, obscuring sunshine and the circling birds, happy fields,
and storied garden; blind with the spatter of a misery
uncomprehended, unanalysed, only felt as something corporeal in
its buffeting effects.

Martha began it; and yet Martha was not really to blame. Indeed,
that was half the trouble of it--no solid person stood full
in view, to be blamed and to make atonement. There was only a
wretched, impalpable condition to deal with. Breakfast was just
over; the sun was summoning us, imperious as a herald with
clamour of trumpet; I ran upstairs to her with a broken bootlace
in my hand, and there she was, crying in a corner, her head in
her apron. Nothing could be got from her but the same dismal
succession of sobs that would not have done, that struck and hurt
like a physical beating; and meanwhile the sun was getting
impatient, and I wanted my bootlace.

Inquiry below stairs revealed the cause. Martha's brother was
dead, it seemed--her sailor brother Billy; drowned in one of