The last ten or twelve days have been different from any that I ever
remember before. Circumstances have made them so, yet it has seemed as
though there were something about themselves that has, as it were,
affected those circumstances. For one thing it has been extraordinarily
hot, so that we have been thankful for every breath of air that has
travelled to us across the downs. The new little water-lily pond has
been most kindly, and has contrived to produce an amazing illusion of
coolness, while the oaks in whose shadow it lies have provided us with
the reality of shade. We two have sat day after day for hours beside it,
and the minutes have slipped along, like bubbles upon some very slow
stream. There is a strange sense of unreality over everything; a sense
that everything is very near its end. The hours of a summer’s day, and
the years of a man’s life seem to be much the same thing, and the one
hardly longer than the other. The chimes from the clock across the
valley are almost the only sounds that break in upon our stillness, for
the birds sing very little just now. It has been a most strange
fortnight; curiously unreal; extraordinarily dreamy and spectral-like.
One by one its days have slipped by, very, very slowly, yet now that
they are almost gone I say to myself--“How terribly swiftly!”