One reviews one's life a little as one departs. Always I shall remember Furnes as a place of wet streets and long dark evenings, with gales blowing, and as a place where I have been always alone. I have not once all this time exchanged a thought with anyone. I have lived in a very damp attic, and talked French to some kind middle-class people, and I have walked a mile for every meal I have had. So I shall always think of Furnes as a wet, dark place, and of myself with a lantern trudging about its mean streets. CHAPTER IV WORKING UNDER DIFFICULTIES I have not written my diary for some weeks. I went home to England and stayed at Rayleigh House. On my way home I met Mr. F. Ware, who told me submarines were about. As I had but just left a much-shelled town, I think he might have held his peace. The usual warm welcome at Rayleigh House, with Mary there to meet me, and Emily Strutt. I wasn't very tired when I first arrived, but fatigue came out on me like a rash afterwards. I got more tired every day, and ended by having a sort of breakdown. This rather spoilt my holiday, but it was very nice seeing people again. It was difficult, I found, to accommodate myself to small things, and one was amazed to find people still driving serenely in closed broughams. It was like going back to live on earth again after being in rather a horrible other world. I went to my own house and enjoyed the very smell of the place. My little library and an hour or two spent there made my happiest time. Different people asked me to things, but I wasn't up to going out, and the weather was amazingly bad. I was to have gone back to work on the Thursday week after I arrived home, but I got a telegram from Madame Sindici saying Furnes was being shelled, and the hospital, etc., was to be evacuated. Dr. Perrin, who was to have taken me back, had to start immediately without me. It was difficult to get news, and hearing nothing I went over on Saturday, January 23rd, as I had left Mrs. Clitheroe in charge of my soup-kitchen, and thought I had better do the burning deck act and get back to it. Mr. Bevan and Mr. Morgan met me at Calais, and told me to wait at Dunkirk, as everyone was quitting Furnes. One of our poor nurses was killed, and the Joos' little house was much damaged. I stopped at Mrs. Clitheroe's flat, very glad to be ill in peace after my seedy condition in London and a bad crossing. Rested quietly all Sunday in the flat by myself. It is an empty, bare little place, with neither carpets nor curtains, but there is something home-like about it, the result, I think, of having an open fire in one room.