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woke again....
One day he found himself going along a road, with a wide space of
sprouting bracken and occasional trees on either side, and suddenly
this road became strangely, perplexingly familiar. "Lord!" he said,
and turned about and stood. "It can't be."
He was incredulous, then left the road and walked along a scarcely
perceptible track to the left, and came in half a minute to an old
lichenous stone wall. It seemed exactly the bit of wall he had known
so well. It might have been but yesterday he was in that place; there
remained even a little pile of wood. It became absurdly the same wood.
The bracken perhaps was not so high, and most of its fronds still
uncoiled; that was all. Here he had stood, it seemed, and there she
had sat and looked down upon him. Where was she now, and what had
become of her? He counted the years back and marvelled that beauty
should have called to him with so imperious a voice--and signified
nothing.
He hoisted himself with some little difficulty to the top of the wall,
and saw off under the beech trees two schoolgirls--small,
insignificant, pig-tailed creatures, with heads of blond and black,
with their arms twined about each other's necks, no doubt telling each
other the silliest secrets.
But that girl with the red hair--was she a countess? was she a queen?
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