and knowing you’re awfully fond of it--and just not being hungry; turning away and leaving it there, not because it’s not everything that it ought to be, but just because--you don’t want it. I should say that’s how it is with me about these--these pathetic things. I know they’re pathetic. I don’t want them.” That is how it was, how it had become, with Rosalie. That was just her first recognition of it, as the swimmer, intent on his own making of his progression, recognises not, till he has been borne some distance by it, the current that also is carrying him along. Visits home to the Rectory were further manifestations to her of this arising symptom. There were appeals that should have arisen to her out of her home; and they did arise; and she recognised them; but they did not appeal to her--not in the old way. She went home very rarely for occasional week-ends, always for her annual holidays, always for Christmas; and the discovery she made was that she liked her home very much better when she was away from it than when she was in it. When a visit was in prospect she desired her home, that is to say her mother, most frightfully. But when the visit was in being the joy she had promised herself she would spread somehow was not at her command; the love she had yearned to show somehow was chilled within her and not forthcoming. It was the tempting dish in a new illustration--rushing eagerly to it, avid of its delights; coming to it and finding, after all, one was not hungry. Strange! Her mother was ageing rapidly. She could have wept to see the ageing signs; but somehow, seeing them, did not weep; was not moved; received the impression but was not sensitive to it; felt the tug but did not respond to the pull. Rather, indeed, was apt to be a little impatient. Returned to London and to her engrossing work and longed to be back with her mother; came back to her mother--and was not hungry. Strange! Then she began to analyse the strangeness of it and found it was not, after all, so strange; at least it was not a thing to be distressed about, nor bearing conviction of unnatural qualities, of hardness, of unkindness. There was a line she knew that came in a verse: There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, The earth, and every common thing To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore. Turn wheresoe’er I may By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.