Then, by way of riposte, I answered in my mind:

"Not at all, for the chance I never had, but what I lost was my desire."

"No, not your desire," said the voice to me within, "but the fulfilment
of it, in which you would have lost your desire." And when that reply
came I naturally turned as all men do on hearing such interior replies,
to a general consideration of regret, and was prepared, if any honest
publisher should have come whistling through that wood, with an offer
proper to the occasion, namely, to produce no less than five volumes on
the Nature of Regret, its mortal sting, its bitter-sweetness, its power
to keep alive in man the pure passions of the soul, its hints at
immortality, its memory of Heaven. But the wood was empty of publishers.
The offer did not come. The moment was lost. The five volumes will
hardly now be written. In place of them I offer poor this, which you may
take or leave. But I beg leave before I end to cite certain words very
nobly attached to that great inn "The Griffin," which has its foundation
set far off in another place, in the town of March, in the Fen Land:

"England my desire, what have you not refused?"




The End Of The World


One day I met a man who was sitting quite silent near Whitney, in the
Thames Valley, in a very large, long, low inn that stands in those