For the second time in my life I lay in a hospital, suffering from concussion of the brain. Almost twelve hours passed before I first regained consciousness, and the morning of the following day was well advanced before I was able to inform the hospital authorities of my identity. No papers, nothing but a handful of silver, had been found in my pockets. At eleven o'clock that morning there was solemnised at St. Margaret's Church the marriage of Cynthia and Charles Barthrop. 'If you call, I will come.' But I had not called. I had even left Cynthia to pace to and fro through an afternoon in the park; at that most critical juncture in both our lives I had failed her. In a brief letter, posted to an address given me by her brother, I acquainted Cynthia with the facts of my accident, and nothing more than the facts. In ten days I was out of the hospital; and Cynthia, another man's wife, was in Norway. IV I dare say no place would have looked very attractive to me when I came out from that hospital; but London and my lodging in it did seem past all bearing unattractive. The Dorking lodging had been definitely relinquished, and in any case I had no wish now to see Dorking, Leith Hill, or the common. Knowing practically nothing of my native land outside its capital, I packed a small bag at my lodging, and walked to the nearest large railway station, which happened to be Paddington. Arrived there, I spent some dull moments in staring at way-bills, and finally took a ticket at a venture for Salisbury. There I found a quiet lodging, and spent the evening in idly wandering about the cathedral close. The next day found me tramping over short turf--turf more ancient than the cathedral--in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge. And so I spent the better part of a fortnight, greatly to the benefit I dare say of my bodily health. I shall always love the tiny hamlets of that sun and wind-washed countryside, between Warminster, Andover, Stockbridge, and Salisbury. Yet always they will be associated in my mind with a bowing down sense of loneliness, of empty, unredeemed sadness, and of irretrievable loss. I cannot pretend that I experienced any sense of remorse or penitence, where my abortive attempt to win another man's bride was concerned. I had no such feeling. But, discreditable as that fact may be, it did not make the aching sorrow that possessed me any the less real. I was conscious of no remorse, and yet, God knows my state of mind was humble enough, though too sombre and despairing to be called resigned. I believe that in the retrospect my loss seemed more, a great deal more to me, than just a lover's loss; though upon that score alone I was smitten to the very dust. It was rather as though, at the one blow, I had lost my heart's desire and a fortune and a position in the world; or, at least, that these had been snatched from my grasp in the moment of becoming mine.