"The Holiday."
A young couple are briefly separated while returning by train from a seaside holiday, and the husband anxiously awaits their reunion. On returning home together, he is unable to sleep, imagining the breathing of his wife and child as the sound of the sea. He relives the "joys of the week that had passed," and as worry and regret slip away, he lies awake longing for the sea and wondering "will it ever come again?" In The Blossoming World (18) Bates quotes a letter in which his editor, Edward Garnett, praises the story (originally called "Once"), saying "It is beautifully rendered, the woman's absorption in the baby and the man's absorption in both...all is beautifully felt." In The New Statesman (January 1, 1927), Day's End and Other Stories (1928), Thirty Tales (1934).