At another time we undertook a more audacious exploit--a 'bus ride to the city limits, or into the country as far as the schedule allowed, and then a tramp into the Beyond, as long as we could hold out. We took the first 'bus we saw bound well into the country. It started from Liverpool Street Station; Symons thought that it was headed east, but neither of us was sure, the road twisted and turned so. Nightfall found us pushing on bravely afoot, Symons glorying in the beautiful moonlight and "sensation" of being "at sea" on land, while I got pleasure out of Symons' romantic appreciation of a trip which reminded me very mundanely of other nocturnal tramps at home. Midnight stopped us at an inn. One of Symons' shoes was giving him trouble, and the romance of the adventure was growing a little dim. We were dusty, tired and, I suppose, suspicious-looking. The innkeeper hesitated before he would let us in, and we had to explain how simple and innocent we were. In the morning, having found our bearings to the extent that we learned we were headed toward the North Sea--we refused to listen to anything more minute than this--we went blithely on our way once more, happy in the consciousness that, for the moment we were care-free, and bound for "any old place" that took our fancy. But, alas! Symons' shoe got to annoying him again, and his spirits began to droop. By ten o'clock they were plainly at half-mast. His foot had become very painful, forcing him to sit down by the side of the road. The jolly adventurer of the night before and early morning had suddenly changed into an irascible literary man "on the road." He said nothing about art, sentences or vocables. He said nothing about anything but the pain in his foot was giving him. Blind travels into the countryside took on a different aspect. It was The Temple for Symons, and just as soon as a train could take him there. That fine indefiniteness of the evening in the moonlight--that joyous keeping in step with _Die Ferne_--the temptress into the Beyond--that dreamy, happy, careless chatting about the great city left behind--these things had vanished; our stroll to the North Sea or the North Pole, or wherever it was that we dreamed we might get to, was at an end. I have seldom known innocent bucolic intentions--we thought ours were bucolic--dissipate into thin air so unconcernedly. But as Symons said about many of our trips together, "the best part of them comes when you look back over them in front of a good fire," and so he will probably smile and look pleasantly reminiscent when he comes across this reminder of our aimless jaunt into Essex.