"You can't conceivably understand," he says. "The fact remains," he goes on, taking up the thread of his argument again with an air of having defined our field, "we are the scars of the past. That's a thing one can discuss--without personalities." "No," I say rather stupidly, "no." "You are always talking as though you could kick the past to pieces; as though one could get right out from oneself and begin afresh. It is your weakness--if you don't mind my being frank--it makes you seem harsh and dogmatic. Life has gone easily for you; you have never been badly tried. You have been lucky--you do not understand the other way about. You are--hard." I answer nothing. He pants for breath. I perceive that in our discussion of his case I must have gone too far, and that he has rebelled. Clearly I must have said something wounding about that ineffectual love story of his. "You don't allow for my position," he says, and it occurs to me to say, "I'm obliged to look at the thing from my own point of view...." One or other of us makes a move. What a lot of filthy, torn paper is scattered about the world! We walk slowly side by side towards the dirt-littered basin of the fountain, and stand regarding two grimy tramps who sit and argue on a further seat. One holds a horrible old boot in his hand, and gesticulates with it, while his other hand caresses his rag-wrapped foot. "Wot does Cham'lain _si_?" his words drift to us. "W'y, 'e says, wot's the good of 'nvesting your kepital where these 'ere Americans may dump it flat any time they like...." (Were there not two men in green sitting on a marble seat?) Section 3 We walk on, our talk suspended, past a ruthlessly clumsy hoarding, towards where men and women and children are struggling about a string of omnibuses. A newsvendor at the corner spreads a newspaper placard upon the wood pavement, pins the corners down with stones, and we glimpse something about:-- MASSACRE IN ODESSA. DISCOVERY OF HUMAN REMAINS AT CHERTSEY. SHOCKING LYNCHING OUTRAGE IN NEW YORK STATE. GERMAN INTRIGUES GET A SET-BACK. THE BIRTHDAY HONOURS.--FULL LIST. Dear old familiar world! An angry parent in conversation with a sympathetic friend jostles against us. "I'll knock his blooming young 'ed orf if 'e cheeks me again. It's these 'ere brasted Board Schools----" An omnibus passes, bearing on a board beneath an incorrectly drawn Union Jack an exhortation to the true patriot to "Buy Bumper's British-Boiled Jam." ... I am stunned beyond the possibility of discussion for a space. In this very place it must have been that the high terrace ran with the gardens below it, along which I came from my double to our hotel. I am going back, but now through reality, along the path I passed so happily in my dream. And the people I saw then are the people I am looking at now--with a difference. The botanist walks beside me, white and nervously jerky in his movements, his ultimatum delivered.