separation--and snatching odd week-ends and nights for Orpington, and
all the while I struggled with these obstinate interrogations. I used
to fall into musing in the trains, I became even a little inaccurate and
forgetful about business things. I have the clearest memory of myself
sitting thoughtful in the evening sunlight on a grassy hillside that
looked toward Seven Oaks and commanded a wide sweep of country, and that
I was thinking out my destiny. I could almost write my thought down now,
I believe, as they came to me that afternoon. Effie, restless little
cockney that she was, rustled and struggled in a hedgerow below,
gathering flowers, discovering flowers she had never seen before. I
had. I remember, a letter from Marion in my pocket. I had even made some
tentatives for return, for a reconciliation; Heaven knows now how I
had put it! but her cold, ill-written letter repelled me. I perceived
I could never face that old inconclusive dullness of life again, that
stagnant disappointment. That, anyhow, wasn't possible. But what was
possible? I could see no way of honour or fine living before me at all.

"What am I to do with life?" that was the question that besieged me.

I wondered if all the world was even as I, urged to this by one motive
and to that by another, creatures of chance and impulse and unmeaning
traditions. Had I indeed to abide by what I had said and done and
chosen? Was there nothing for me in honour but to provide for Effie, go
back penitent to Marion and keep to my trade in rubbish--or find some
fresh one--and so work out the residue of my days? I didn't accept that
for a moment. But what else was I to do? I wondered if my case was
the case of many men, whether in former ages, too, men had been so
guideless, so uncharted, so haphazard in their journey into life. In the
Middle Ages, in the old Catholic days, one went to a priest, and he said
with all the finality of natural law, this you are and this you must do.