That was a strange experience, that sunlit afternoon, a mingling of deepest pain and softest hope, a touch of fire from the very altar of faith, linking the beautiful past with the dark present, and showing me that the future held a promise of perfect graciousness and radiant strength.  Did other lives hold the same rich secrets?  I felt that they did; for that day, at least, all mankind, young and old alike, seemed indeed my brothers and sisters.  In the young men that went lightly in and out, finding life so full of zest, thinking each other so interesting and wonderful; in the tired face of the old Professor, limping along the street; in the prosperous, comfortable contentment of robust men, full of little affairs and schemes—­I saw in all of them the same hope, the same unity of purpose, the same significance; and we three in the midst, united by love and loss alike, we were at the centre, as it were, of a great drama of life and love, in which even death could only shift the scene and enrich the intensity of the secret hope.

September 5, 1889.

The rapt and exalted mood that I carried away from Cambridge could not last; I did not hope that it could.  We have had a dark and sad time, yet with gleams of sweetness in it, because we have realised how closely we are drawn together, how much we depend on each other.  Maud’s brave spirit has seemed for a time broken utterly; and this has done more than anything to bring us nearer, because I have felt the stronger, realising how much she leant upon me.  She has been filled with self-reproach, I know not for what shadowy causes.  She blames herself for a thousand things, for not having been more to Alec, for having followed her own interests and activities, for not having understood him better.  It is all unreal, morbid, overstrained, of course, but none the less terribly there.  I have tried to persuade her that it is but weariness and grief trying to attach itself to definite causes, but she cannot be comforted.  Meanwhile we walk, stroll, drive, read, and talk together—­mostly of him, for I can do that now; we can even smile together over little memories, though it is perilous walking, and a step brings us to the verge of tears.  But, thank God, there is not a single painful memory, not a thing we would have had otherwise in the whole of that little beautiful life; and I wonder now wretchedly, whether its very beauty and brightness ought not to have prepared me more to lose him; it was too good to be true, too perfectly pure and brave.  Yet I never even dreamed that he would leave us; I should have treasured the bright days better if I had.  There are times of sharpest sorrow, days when I wake and have forgotten; when I think of him as with us, and then the horror of my loss comes curdling and weltering back upon me; when I thrill from head to foot with hopeless agony, rebelling, desiring, hating the death that parts us.