Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/166

154 dreams: they were not of the day's, but emanations. Outside this shadowy realm there was some other emanation, some child's, that was more of the earth than ours that were of this middle place, and it would have entered therein, but could not. And if this was a distress to anyone, I could not tell, not even if it was to myself.—The end was that a start shot up through me, and I awoke fully. The green blinds covered the two large windows opposite my bed. A little light came in through them and made a submarine atmosphere in the room. This I had known before. I sat up: then raised myself, till I could see myself in the large dressing-table mirror between the two green-blind-covered windows. That made me smile.

After lunch I went out for a walk.

The knowledge that whatever humour I went out in was sure to be different from the humour in which I returned, held to me a momentary trouble now. For I was happy enough with the life of the morning, the mild sunny air and soft heaven, to wish for no better state in which to face the ordeal of to-night. 'Ordeal? Ay; the faint tremor that comes to me at the thought is surely enough to tell me that to-night will be an ordeal. Ordeal? No: what ordeal can there be?… Of what am I thinking? I do not know.… Ay, that is the truth: "I do not know." And yet the sense of the unknown does not.… What?—Was ever such confusion? No: not confusion. What then? I don't know. It's folly trying to be subtle.' I gave it up.

That day was a day apart. A day apart is a day in which the past is pallid: the present pallid: the future a mist into which the earth-floor goes, not even unknown: a day of feelings about feelings, of dreams about dreams.

I came in about five. I had seen many things, known nothing. I felt and realised that I was hungry. I went to the top of the kitchen-stairs and called to Mrs. Herbert, asking if I could have some soup and rice? She agreed. I went into the study again, and stood in the window, and looked out.