“He looked down at me curiously.  He hesitated a moment—­then he bent and kissed my mouth.  The room whirled about me.  Strange sounds were in my ears; for one moment he loved me again.  I threw myself in a chair, and buried my face in my hands.  I cried out to God in my desperate misery.  It was over, and he was gone—­he who begged once for a kiss, as a slave might beg for bread!

“And now in all this world are but two good things left me, my Art and little Elsie.  Oh! my book, I clung to it in that bitter moment, as the work which should save my reason to live for the child.”

“February 18, 18—­

“I have written continuously.  I drugged myself with writing as if it were chloral, against the stabs of memory that assaulted me.  There will be chapters I shall never read, those that I wrote as I sat by my desk the day after the 12th, the cold, gray light pouring in on me, sometimes holding my pen suspended while I was having a mortal struggle with my will, forcing back thoughts, driving my mind to work as though it were a brute.  I conquered through the day.  My work did not suffer; as I read it over I saw that I had never written better, in spite of certain pains that almost stopped my heart.  But at night! ah! if I had had a room to myself, would I have given myself one moment of rest that night?  Would I not have written on until I slept from fatigue?

“But that could not be.  Elsie moved restlessly; the light disturbed her.  For a moment I almost hated her plaintive little voice, God forgive me! and then I undressed and slipped into bed, and so quietly I lay beside her, that she thought I slept.  I breathed evenly and lightly—­I ought to be able to countefeit sleep by this, I have done it times enough.

“Well, it is of no avail to re-live that night.  I thought there was no hope left in me, but I have been cheating myself, it seems, for it fought hard, every inch of the ground, for survival that night, though now I am sure it will never lift its head again.

“And now, as I said, there is nothing left in all earth for me but my sister and my Art. “Poete, prends ton luth.”

“May 10, 18—.

“My book is a success, that is, the world calls it a success; but in all the years to come he will never love me again, therefore to me it is a failure, having failed of its purpose, its reason for being.  What does he care for the fame it has brought me, since he no longer loves me?

“Had it only come a year ago!

“I went to see Mrs. ——­ to-day, and I started to hear his voice in the hall, as I sat waiting in the dim drawing-room.  He was just going out, having been upstairs, Mrs. ——­ said, to look at the children’s fernery; and I, as I heard that voice, I could have gone out and thrown myself at his feet across the threshold, those cadences so stole into my heart and head, bringing the old madness back.  I had one of the sharp attacks of pain at the heart, and Mrs ——­ sent me home in the carriage.  Elsie is in the country, well and strong.  I am so glad.  These illnesses frighten her sorely.  I am perhaps growing thin and weak, but I cannot die, alas!  Let the beauty go.  I no longer care to preserve it.