station, the talk with the boy on the hill, the scent of the roses and the afternoon sky. Everything is destroyed if you go into it too closely, or it is so for me. I should have a memory that would last me all my life. 

 But now the town was advancing towards him. His steps made no sound so that it seemed that he himself stood still, waiting to be seized. He took one last look at the sea. Then he was caught up and the houses closed about him. 

XI

 Six was striking from some distant clock as he started up the street. At the bottom of the hill there were fishermen's cottages, nets spread out on the stones to dry, some boats drawn up above a wooden jetty. Then, as the street spread out before him, some little shops began. Figures were passing hither and thither all transmuted in the afternoon light. Maradick need not have feared, he thought, this town has not been touched at all. 

 As he advanced yet further the houses delighted him with their broad doorways, their overhanging eaves, crooked roof and worn flights of steps. He came to a place where wooden stairs led to an upper path that ran before a higher row of houses and under the steps there were shops. 

 He could feel a stir and bustle in the place as though this were a night of festivity. Groups were gathered at corners, women stood in doorways laughing and whispering, a group of children was marching, wearing cocked hats of paper, beating on a wooden box and blowing on penny trumpets. 

 Then on coming into the Square he paused in sheer delighted wonder. This stands on a raised plateau above the sea, and the town hall, solid and virtuous above its flight of wide grey steps, is its great glory. Streets seemed to tumble in and out of the Square on every side. On a far corner there was a merry-go-round and there were booths and wooden trestles, some tents and flags waving above them. But just now it was almost deserted, only a man or two, some children playing in and out of the tents, a dog hunting among the scraps of paper that littered the cobbles. 

 A church of Norman architecture filled the right side of the Square, and squeezed between its grey walls and the modern town hall was a tall old tower of infinite age, with thin slits of windows and iron bars that pushed out against the pale blue sky like pointing fingers. 

 There were houses in the Square that were charming, houses with queer bow-windows and protruding doors like 

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