I am not afraid of the dark. I enjoy it. You can think so awfully well
when there is nothing to distract your eyes, and the world feels so
spacious after our digs.
All my life I have felt there was never quite enough room for the three
of us, dad, and the mater, and myself. I believe if we lived in St.
Paul's together I should still feel overcrowded.
I walked for a long time. It was a topping night, the air was as soft
and warm as cotton-wool and the moon was on the sea. It was the sort of
night that makes you want to do a frightful lot of good in the world,
mother a lot of orphans or marry a man from St. Dunstan's. I could have
cried because there was such a lot of sorrow and unhappiness in the
world. You do feel like that sometimes out of doors.
I went along keeping close to the cliff and not thinking, and then I
suddenly realised that I was right under the lee of the big guns, and
facing the big guns of the fort just across the water; and the
searchlights over there suddenly started playing and picked me out.