I yawned, and we relapsed into silence. Then gradually my thoughts
drifted--drifted away from London, far from crowds and hustle, the
rumble of motor 'buses and the hootings and squawkings of ears, to a
peaceful, rural solitude.

I was in Berkshire. Down in the picturesque valley into which I gazed
from the summit of a wooded slope stood a Manor house, ivy-grown, old,
very beautiful Facing it an enormous plateau, hewn out of the Down, had
been converted to various uses--there were gardens, shrubberies, tennis
lawns. Lower came terrace after terrace of smoothly mown grass, each
with its little path and borders of shrubs, interspersed with the finest
Wellingtonias in the county, tapering gracefully to heaven,
copper-beeches and grand oaks.

The house itself was very long and low, its frontage white, mellowed
with age, and broken up by old-fashioned, latticed windows which gleamed
blue and grey in the translucent, frosted air. The roof of the Manor
boasted a mass of beautiful red-brown gables, many half hidden from
sight by the wealth of ivy; last summer also by a veritable tangle of
Virginia creeper and crimson rambler, now sleeping their winter sleep.

My thoughts wandered on. They travelled with extraordinary rapidity, as
thought does, picture after picture rising into the vision of my
imagination like the scenes in a kaleidoscopic cinema.

Now I was seated in the old Manor. I could see the room distinctly. It
was a small boudoir or ante-room opening into the large drawing-room--a
cosy, homely place, its low, latticed windows, divided into four,
opening outwards on to garden and terraces, its broad, inviting