Unutterable tension
He made his way round to the front of the house with the intention of taking to the road again, and was skirting the main lawn when something attracted his attention. A small brown bird was flying backwards across the lawn, about five feet from the ground; but it was not this which seemed so strange. It was the fact that the bird was flying far more slowly than any natural bird ever does. Previously, all movements about him, although in reverse, had been in- variably at normal speeds. But this bird was like something in a slow-motion film; it was simply drifting backwards, and he could count each wing-beat. He watched it with interest, and when it was almost in the centre of the lawn his eyes widened in surprise. For it had stopped in mid-air! In a moment he was across to it. There, five feet above the ground, the small brown bird hung as if suspended by invisible wires, frozen into an exquisitely carved, tiny statue. He passed his hand all around it, below and above, and finally
