Mr. ——­ has been very good to me; I have seen him almost daily.  He seems the only person who perfectly understands.  He has hardly said a word to me about my sorrow.  He said once that he should not speak of it; before, he said, I was like a boy learning a lesson with the help of another boy, but that now I was being taught by the Master Himself.  That may be so; but the Master has a very scared and dull pupil, alas, who cannot even discern the letters.  I care nothing whether God be pleased or displeased; I bear His will, without either pain or resistance.  I simply feel as if there had been some vast and overwhelming mistake somewhere; a mistake so incredible and inconceivable that nothing else mattered; as if—­I do not speak profanely—­God Himself were appalled at what He had done, and dared not smite further one whom He had stunned into silence and apathy.

With Mr. ——­ I talk; he talks of simple, quiet things, of old books and thoughts.  He tells me, sometimes, when I am too weary to speak, long, beautiful, quiet stories of his younger days, and I listen like a child to his grave voice, only sorry when it comes to an end.  So the days pass, and I will not say I have no pleasure in them, because I have won back a sort of odd childish pleasure in small incidents, sights, and sounds.  The part of me that can feel seems to have been simply cut gently away, and I live in the hour, just glad when the sun is out, sorry when it is dull and cheerless.

I read the other day one of my old books, and I could not believe it was mine.  It seemed like the voice of some one I had once known long ago, in a golden hour.  I was amused and surprised at my own quickness and inventiveness, at the confidence with which I interpreted everything so glibly and easily.  I cannot interpret any more, and I do not seem to desire to do so.  I seem to wait, with a half-amused smile, to see if God can make anything out of the strange tangle of things, as a child peers in within a scaffolding, and sees nothing but a forest of poles, little rising walls of chambers, a crane swinging weights to and fro.  What can ever come, he thinks, out of such strange confusion, such fruitless hurry?

Well, I will not write any more; a sense of weariness and futility comes over me.  I will go back to my garden to see what I can see, only dumbly and mutely thankful that it is not required of me to perform any dull and monotonous task, which would interrupt my idle dreams.

February 8, 1891.

I tried this morning to look through some of the old letters and papers in Maud’s cabinet.  There were my own letters, carefully tied up with a ribbon; letters from her mother and father; from the children when we were away from them.  I began to read, and was seized with a sharp, unreasoning pain, surprised by sudden tears.  I seemed dumbly to resent this, and I put them all away again.  Why should I disturb myself to no purpose?  “There shall be no