that they were in it, but neither betrayed by word or act a hint of interpretation. They talked privately, no doubt, but of that I can report no details. And so it was that, after ten days of a very commonplace visit, I found myself looking straight into the face of a Strangeness that defied capture at close quarters. ‘There’s something here that never happens,’ were the words that rose in my mind, ‘and that’s why none of us can speak of it.’ And as I looked out of the window and watched the vulgar blackbirds, with toes turned in, boring out their worms, I realised sharply that even they, as indeed everything large and small in the house and grounds, shared this strangeness, and were twisted out of normal appearance because of it. Life, as expressed in the entire place, was crumpled, dwarfed, emasculated. God’s meanings here were crippled, His love of joy was stunted. Nothing in the garden danced or sang. There was hate in it. ‘The Shadow,’ my thought hurried on to completion, ‘is a manifestation of hate; and hate is the Devil.’ And then I sat back frightened in my chair, for I knew that I had partly found the truth. Leaving my books I went out into the open. The sky was overcast, yet the day by no means gloomy, for a soft, diffused light oozed through the clouds and turned all things warm and almost summery. But I saw the grounds now in their nakedness because I understood. Hate means strife, and the two together weave the robe that terror wears. Having no so-called religious beliefs myself, nor belonging to any set of dogmas called a creed, I could stand outside these feelings and observe. Yet they soaked into me sufficiently for me to grasp sympathetically what others, with more cabined souls (I flattered myself), might feel. That picture in the dining-room stalked everywhere, hid behind every tree, peered down upon me from the peaked ugliness of the bourgeois towers, and left the impress of its powerful hand upon every bed of flowers. ‘You must not do this, you must not do that,’ went past me through the air. ‘You must not leave these narrow paths,’ said the rigid iron railings of black. ‘You shall not walk here,’ was written on the lawns. ‘Keep to the steps,’ ‘Don’t pick the flowers; make no noise of laughter, singing, dancing,’ was placarded all over the rose-garden, and ‘Trespassers will be--not prosecuted but--_destroyed_’ hung from the crest of monkey-tree and holly. Guarding the ends of each artificial terrace stood gaunt, implacable policemen, warders, gaolers. ‘Come with us,’ they chanted, ‘or be damned eternally.’