Should he go outside the Cathedral--to the place where
the trains met?
Interweaving with such thoughts the problem of Eleanor rose again into
his consciousness.
Weren't there books she ought to read? Weren't there books she ought to
be made to read? And books--and friends--that ought to be imperatively
forbidden? Imperatively!
But how to define the forbidden?
He began to compose an address on Modern Literature (so-called).
It became acrimonious.
Before dawn the birds began to sing.
His mind had seemed to be a little tranquillized, there had been a
distinct feeling of subsidence sleepwards, when first one and then
another little creature roused itself and the bishop to greet the
gathering daylight.
It became a little clamour, a misty sea of sound in which individuality
appeared and disappeared. For a time a distant cuckoo was very
perceptible, like a landmark looming up over a fog, like the cuckoo in
the Pastoral Symphony.
The bishop tried not to heed these sounds, but they were by their very
nature insistent sounds. He lay disregarding them acutely.
Presently he pulled the coverlet over his ears.
A little later he sat up in bed.
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