I opened my eyes suddenly.  I heard a door shut loudly, the sounds of boots and clothing flung hurriedly down came through the thin partition, and I knew that the lodger in the next room had tramped heavily up the stairs, and was hastening to throw his clumsy body on the bed.

Elsie was breathing softly by my side, and my incredulous, disappointed eyes saw only the reflection on the ceiling, like two great tears of light, and I slept no more until the morning.

I read this, and it sounds coherent.  Perhaps I have been needlessly alarmed, perhaps the fear that is so terrible that I have not written it lest it seems to grow real, is only a foolish fear.  I must write, I must make myself a name.  To bring him that, in lieu of dower, would be something; but poor, unknown, and of an obscure birth.—­Will I not have earned a short lease of happiness, if I achieve fame for his sake?

I will barter all for one week,—­no, one day—­of happiness.  I do not wish to grow old, to outlive my illusions.  Only a short respite from cares and sorrow, a brief time of flowers, and music, and love, and laughter, and ecstatic tears, and intense emotion.  I can so well understand the slave in the glorious “Un nuit de Cleopatre,” who resolved a life-time into twelve hours, and having no more left to desire, drank death as calmly as it were a draught of wine.

January, 9, 18—.

“Elsie, my poor little sister, is ill.  Only a childish ailment, but I have not written for three days, and she has lain, feeble and languid, in my arms, and I have told her stories.  We have moved again, and here, thank God! the furniture, and the carpets and the paper do not swear at each other so violently.  I say, thank God! with due reverence.  I am truly and devoutly grateful for the release from that sense of unrest caused by the twisted red and green arabesques on the floor.  Here all is sombre.  The walls are a dull shade, the carpet neutral, the furniture the faded brocatelle dedicate to boarding-houses; but it is not so bad.  The golden light lies along the floor, and is reflected on my ’Birth of Venus’ on the wall.  Above my desk is a small shelf of my best-loved books,—­loved now; perhaps I shall destroy them next year, having absorbed all their nutriment, even as now, ’I burn all I used to worship.  I worship all I used to burn.’  Under the bookrack is a copy of Severn’s last sketch of Keats, the vanquished, dying head of the slain poet, more brutally killed than the world counts.  The eyes are closed and sunken; the mouth, once so prone to kiss, droops pitifully at the corners; the beautiful temples are hollow.  Underneath I have written the words of de Vigny, the words as true as death, if as bitter:  ’Hope is the greatest of all our follies.’  I need no other curb to my mad dreams than this.