She continued: “Fancy saying 'always' and being glad to say it! I never thought I could. Do you know--will this frighten you?--I am one of those people who dread the idea of 'always.' I never could bear the idea of looking far, far ahead and not seeing any end. It frightened me. Ever since father died, I've been like that--even in little things, even in tangible things. When we go to the seaside in the summer I never can bear to look straight across the sea. That gives me the idea of always--of long, long miles and miles without a turn or a stop. I want to think every day, every hour, that what I am doing can't go on--mustchange. It suffocates me to think otherwise. I want to jump out, to scream.” Then she gave that laugh that seldom failed to come to her relief, and said: “It's a sort of claustrophobia--isn't that the word?--on a universal scale. But why is it? And why am I suddenly changed now? Why does the thought of always, always, endless always with you, bring a sort of--don't laugh, dear--a sort of bliss, peace?” This poor George of mine, who was no deep thinker, nevertheless had the reason pat. He said: “I think because the past has all been unhappy and because this, you know, means happiness.” She gave a little sigh; told him: “Yes, that's it--happiness.” V. And now they fell to making plans as mating birds build nests. Here a bit of straw and there a tuft of moss; here a feather, there a shred of wool--George would do this and George would do that; here the house would be and thus would they do in the house. Probabilities were outraged, obstacles vaulted. Castles that are builded in the air spring into being quicker than Aladdin's palace--bricks and mortar, beams and stones are featherweight when handled in the clouds; every piece is so dovetailed, marked and numbered that like magic there springs before the eye the shining whole--pinnacled, turreted, embattled. Disaster arrives when the work is completed. “There!” we say, standing back, a little flushed and out of breath with the excitement of the thing. “There! There's a place in which to live! Could any existence be more glorious?” And then we advance a step and lean against the walls to survey the surrounding prospect. It is the fatal action. The material body touches the aerial structure and down with a crash the castle comes--back we pitch into the foundations, and thwack, bump, thwack, comes the masonry tumbling about us, bruising, wounding. VI.