We were staying with some extremely pleasant people. The daughter of the house, Sybil Grant, is to live with us for a term because she is unhappy at school. Her mother likes my system of education: the household is one of the best I have ever stayed in. They are all interested in modern movements, in poetry, science, ethics, everything pertaining to the intellect, and at the same time they are athletic. Like the people in "Mr. Britling" they play strenuous and humorous games of hockey every Sunday afternoon, recruiting from local Belgian refugees, service men at home on leave, nurses, and all the local girls for their sides. I have rarely enjoyed a holiday more. Yet even here the bad side of my character came out at times. I grew restless and morose some days and dashed off to London for no purpose except that I wanted to keep moving. The suburbs of London on the north-east side depress me frightfully. Coming back from Liverpool Street through Hackney Downs and Enfield is like going through the Inferno. _June 25, 1916_ It is rather jolly having Sybil Grant in the house: she gives me a special human interest. It is the first time I have come into contact with an absolutely "slack" person. She disliked school because she could not get on with her work. I don't wonder. She is incapable of tackling any subject unless she loves it. She reads a great deal of poetry and likes writing it. But her art is quite formless. Like the boy Coningsby she always writes of sea-gulls and desolate cliffs. All her topics are as morbid as youthful topics always are: she delights in death-bed scenes and lonely suicides, deserted lovers, and murderers. In her way she is something of a mystic. She rather thinks that she is gifted with "second sight," which spoils her a good deal, because it leads her to imagine herself as a sort of divine prophetess. She makes many friends among the boys, which is good both for them and for herself.