In the morning, when the time came for Kingston to set off once more on his journey, even the bustling streets of to-day had a cheerfulness of their own. The sun was shining brilliantly, the motor had recovered its good humour, everything looked solid and practical and businesslike and wholesome. The vision of the twilight had passed. Jane Austen was once more dust of Winchester Cathedral, and the butchers and bakers and grocers who stood by their shop-doors and counters were now the sole occupants of the little town; the mystic walls had melted into modern brick and stucco, the ghosts had faded back into the world they came from. And yet, as Kingston went on his way, he knew that in a hundred years or less the case would be reversed again, as he had seen it reversed in the dusk of the previous evening. For ultimate reality conquers ephemeral, apparent reality, and the butchers and the bakers and the grocers would long since have passed away, and become indistinguishable drift again of the earth, with no memory to say that they had ever worn flesh at all; but Bingley and Darcy and Elizabeth would still be there, eternally young, unforgotten and unforgettable. For what death can touch the life invisible? Reality lives on for ever; it is only the composite, the visible, the tangible, that can break up in change, and pass, and disappear. The solid is the only phantom. On and on through the tranquil glory of the day and the country the motor sped willingly upon its course, put to its highest pressure of flight, that the whole distance might be accomplished in as little time as might be. To-day it ungrudgingly gave its best energies to travelling cheerfully, indefatigably, briskly. Through sleepy little towns it hummed and whirred; along deep lanes, and under the shadow of great ancient forests. Then by degrees the way became more open. The road wound on, over stretch after stretch of purple moorland, dotted here and there with sparse pines or hollies that had watched the hunting of William the Norman; over vast tracts of heather and sedge, over hill and valley of the wide country. By now the clear freshness of morning had given way to the leaden glare of midday. The air was thick and dull with heat, and banked clouds indistinguishably crowded the dome of heaven, only occasionally permitting a pale sun to pierce the haze. The sky had no longer any colour; an indeterminate brassy heat pervaded it, and its farthest distance melted sullenly into the livid profundities of the landscape, till there was no horizon, only one vague vapour filling the uttermost parts of the world.