So I've a home of my own, though earth crashes and kingdoms fall and a comet strikes against us and puts us out. For a little I have a fortified spot wherein to defy the worst that time can do. I am a householder, on my own plot of ground, crossing and re-crossing my own threshold; and the big wrought-iron key is in my hand. There are ashes still upon the hearth,--from whose fire? New flame shall go up from the old grey ashes,--the central spark of home shall be rekindled here; and that is the whole story of human life. How fortunate, and how unusual, in so small a house, that the hall leads all the way through from green to green! We shall get all the breezes that blow, for the house faces the west, as all houses should face; and always and forever we shall hear the stream. There's a step there at the back, down to the garden walk, that you must remember, you who are so absent-minded. --I keep forgetting that you are dead. September 6. I have been away for a week, a week in which I have not dared leave one moment unoccupied. To keep my sanity, I must be busy all the time; life cannot be cut short in this way. When great forces have begun to stir within you, like the gathering of all waters far and near, you cannot safely stop them all at once; I must have, in the weeks to come, some outlet for this surging energy. London is quiet, and awful with the self-control of great tension. The war-terror mounts, though few speak of it; the Germans have crossed the Marne; the French government has moved to Bordeaux, and all the world seems tottering. Back in my charmed village, I wait and listen. They would not take me at the front; did you know that, the day after you left, I made an attempt to follow? No training, and physically unfit, was the verdict. I thought that I could perhaps prove to you in act that of which I could not convince you by argument in our dispute the day we walked to Godstow,--that women have the kind of courage possessed by men.