scarcely had a moment to myself. Lunches, dinners, parties of all
kinds; I could not go to half the gatherings I was bidden to. Dear good
South Kensington! Chelsea too!"

"_Carissima_, when London does manage to catch you, it is no
wonder it makes the most of you," he said. "You mustn't blame London
for that."

"No, dear, I don't. Everyone was tremendously kind and hospitable; they
all did their best. If I blame anyone, I blame myself. But I think this
Riseholme life with its finish and its exquisiteness spoils one for
other places. London is like a railway-junction: it has no true life of
its own. There is no delicacy, no appreciation of fine shades.
Individualism has no existence there; everyone gabbles together,
gabbles and gobbles: am not I naughty? If there is a concert in a
private house--you know my views about music and the impossibility of
hearing music at all if you are stuck in the middle of a row of
people--even then, the moment it is over you are whisked away to supper,
or somebody wants to have a few words. There is always a crowd, there is
always food, you cannot be alone, and it is only in loneliness, as
Goethe says, that your perceptions put forth their flowers. No one in
London has time to listen: they are all thinking about who is there and
who isn't there, and what is the next thing. The exquisite present, as
you put it in one of your poems, has no existence there: it is always
the feverish future."

"Delicious phrase! I should have stolen that gem for my poor poems, if
you had discovered it before."

She was too much used to this incense to do more than sniff it in