This morning I went out for a walk. I was feeling wretchedly ill. I had to go to the Post Office and there I met little O'Donnell, the Rector, and dear old Medley his curate. It was torture to talk to them, to preserve an ordinary appearance. I felt that old Medley's eyes were on me the whole time. I like him very much. I know every corner of his good simple mind as if I had lived in it. He is a good man, and I can't help liking him. He dislikes and distrusts me intensely, however. He doesn't know enough--like Morton Sims for instance--to understand that I want to be good, that I am of his company really. The Rector himself was rather too charming. He fussed away about my poems, asked after Dorothy Davidson at Nice, purred out something that the Duke of Perth had said to him about the verses I had in the "Spectator" a month ago. Yet O'Donnell must know that I drink badly. Neither he nor Medley know, of course, how absolutely submerged I really am. No one ever realises that about a "man who drinks" until they read of his death in the paper. Only doctors, wives, experienced eyes know. I funked Medley's keen old eyes in the Post Office and I couldn't help disgust at O'Donnell's humbug, as I thought it, though it may have been meant kindly. Curious! to fear one good man because he detects and reprobates one's wickedness, to feel contempt for another because he is civil. I hurried away from them and went into the Mortland Royal Arms. Two strong whiskies gave myself back to me. I felt a stupid desire to meet the two clergymen again, with my nerves under proper control--to show them that I was myself. Going back home, however, another nerve wave came over me. I knew how automatic and jerky my movements were really. I knew that each movement of my legs was dictated by a _conscious_ exercise of command from the brain. I imagined that everyone I met--a few labourers--must know it and observe it also. I realise, now that I am safe in my study again, that this was nonsense. They couldn't have seen--or _could_ they? --I am sure of nothing now!