Nearly dinner-time. . . .

No doubt Christian during the earlier stages of his pilgrimage noticed the recurrence of the old familiar hours of his life of emptiness and vanity.  Or rather of vanity—­simply.  Why drag in the thought of emptiness just at this point? . . .

It was very early to go to bed.

He might perhaps sit and think for a time.  Here for example was a mossy bank, a seat, and presently a bed.  So far there were only three stars visible but more would come.  He dropped into a reclining attitude.  Damp!

When one thinks of sleeping out under the stars one is apt to forget the dew.

He spread his Swiss cloak out on the soft thick carpeting of herbs and moss, and arranged his knapsack as a pillow.  Here he would lie and recapitulate the thoughts of the day. (That squealing might be a young fox.) At the club at present men would be sitting about holding themselves back from dinner.  Excellent the clear soup always was at the club!  Then perhaps a Chateaubriand.  That—­what was that?  Soft and large and quite near and noiseless.  An owl!

The damp feeling was coming through his cloak.  And this April night air had a knife edge.  Early ice coming down the Atlantic perhaps.  It was wonderful to be here on the top of the round world and feel the icebergs away there.  Or did this wind come from Russia?  He wasn’t quite clear just how he was oriented, he had turned about so much.  Which was east?  Anyhow it was an extremely cold wind.

What had he been thinking?  Suppose after all that ending with Mrs. Skelmersdale was simply a beginning.  So far he had never looked sex in the face. . . .

He sat up and sneezed violently.

It would be ridiculous to start out seeking the clue to one’s life and be driven home by rheumatic fever.  One should not therefore incur the risk of rheumatic fever.

Something squealed in the bushes.

It was impossible to collect one’s thoughts in this place.  He stood up.  The night was going to be bitterly cold, savagely, cruelly cold. . . .

No.  There was no thinking to be done here, no thinking at all.  He would go on along the track and presently he would strike a road and so come to an inn.  One can solve no problems when one is engaged in a struggle with the elements.  The thing to do now was to find that track again. . . .

It took Benham two hours of stumbling and walking, with a little fence climbing and some barbed wire thrown in, before he got down into Shere to the shelter of a friendly little inn.  And then he negotiated a satisfying meal, with beef-steak as its central fact, and stipulated for a fire in his bedroom.

The landlord was a pleasant-faced man; he attended to Benham himself and displayed a fine sense of comfort.  He could produce wine, a half-bottle of Australian hock, Big Tree brand No. 8, a virile wine, he thought of sardines to precede the meal, he provided a substantial Welsh rarebit by way of a savoury, he did not mind in the least that it was nearly ten o’clock.  He ended by suggesting coffee.  “And a liqueur?”