Occasionally, from my window I would see her in the wood beyond the
drawbridge, cool and white in green shade, with her Bible probably,
training her skirt like a court-lady, and looking much taller than
before. I believe that this new dressing produced a separation between
us more complete than it might have been; and especially after that day
between Vevay and Ouchy I was very careful not to meet her. The more I
saw that she bejewelled herself, powdered herself, embalmed herself like
sachets of sweet scents, chapleted her Greek-dressed head with gold
fillets, the more I shunned her. Myself, somehow, had now resumed
European dress, and, ah me, I was greatly changed, greatly changed, God
knows, from the portly inflated monarch-creature that strutted and
groaned four years previously in the palace at Imbros: so that my manner
of life and thought might once more now have been called modern and
Western.
All the more was my sense of responsibility awful: and from day to day
it seemed to intensify.
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