will be a dreary story, I'm afraid, but you will want to hear it all. It
was a nightmare time, but now one sees it in a calmer perspective."

"I feel in a nightmare still," said Yeovil.

"We all felt like that," said Cicely, rather with the air of an elder
person who tells a child that it will understand things better when it
grows up; "time is always something of a narcotic you know. Things seem
absolutely unbearable, and then bit by bit we find out that we are
bearing them. And now, dear, I'll fill up your notification paper and
leave you to superintend your unpacking. Robert will give you any help
you want."

"What is the notification paper?" asked Yeovil.

"Oh, a stupid form to be filled up when any one arrives, to say where
they come from, and their business and nationality and religion, and all
that sort of thing. We're rather more bureaucratic than we used to be,
you know."

Yeovil said nothing, but into the sallow greyness of his face there crept
a dark flush, that faded presently and left his colour more grey and
bloodless than before.

The journey seemed suddenly to have recommenced; he was under his own
roof, his servants were waiting on him, his familiar possessions were in
evidence around him, but the sense of being at home had vanished. It was
as though he had arrived at some wayside hotel, and been asked to
register his name and status and destination. Other things of disgust
and irritation he had foreseen in the London he was coming to--the