A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill


BOOK II


Volume 3.



CHAPTER I

SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE!

It was late November. And as Honora sat at the window of the drawing-room
of the sleeping car, life seemed as fantastic and unreal as the moss-hung
Southern forest into which she stared. She was happy, as a child is happy
who is taken on an excursion into the unknown. The monotony of existence
was at last broken, and riven the circumscribing walls. Limitless
possibilities lay ahead.

The emancipation had not been without its pangs of sorrow, and there were
moments of retrospection--as now. She saw herself on Uncle Tom's arm,
walking up the aisle of the old church. How many Sundays of her life had
she sat watching a shaft of sunlight strike across the stone pillars of
its gothic arches! She saw, in the chancel, tall and grave and pale,
Peter Erwin standing beside the man with the flushed face who was to be
her husband. She heard again the familiar voice of Dr. Ewing reciting the