i did not see lady mary justin for nearly seven months after my return to england. of course i had known that a meeting was inevitable, and i had taken that very carefully into consideration before i decided to leave south africa. but many things had happened to me during those crowded years, so that it seemed possible that that former magic would no longer sway and distress me. not only had new imaginative interests taken hold of me but—i had parted from adolescence. i was a man. i had been through a great war, seen death abundantly, seen hardship and passion, and known hunger and shame and desire. a hundred disillusioning revelations of the quality of life had come to me; once for example when we were taking some people to the concentration camps it had been necessary to assist at the premature birth of a child by the wayside, a startlingly gory and agonizing business for a young man to deal with. heavens! how it shocked me! i could give a score of such grim pictures—and queer pictures....

and it wasn't only the earthlier aspects of the life about me but also of the life within me that i had been discovering. the first wonder and innocence, the worshipping, dawn-clear passion of youth, had gone out of me for ever....