A GARDEN DIARY 213 
Juty 28, 1900 
i Gs 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 some- 
thing 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 cool- 
ness, 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 
