me than the touch of weariness that hung, after my long vigil, over
limbs and brain. The faculty, the godlike power of knowing and
imagining, all actually less to me than my own tiny and fragile
sensations. Such moods as these are strange things, because they
bring with them so intense a desire to know, to perceive, and yet
paralyse one with the horror of the darkness in which one moves.
One cannot conceive why it is that one is given the power of
realising the multiplicity of creation, and yet at the same time
left so wholly ignorant of its significance. One longs to leap into
the arms of God, to catch some whisper of His voice; and at the
same time there falls the shadow of the prison-house; one is driven
relentlessly back upon the old limited life, the duties, the
labours, the round of meals and sleep, the tiny relations with
others as ignorant as ourselves, and, still worse, with the petty
spirits who have a complacent explanation of it all. Even over love
itself the shadow falls. I am as near to my own dear and true Maud
as it is possible to be; but I can tell her nothing of the mystery,
and she can tell me nothing. We are allowed for a time to draw
close to each other, to whisper to each other our hopes and fears;
but at any moment we can be separated. The children, Alec and
Maggie, dearer to me--I can say it honestly--than life itself, to
whom we have given being, whose voices I hear as I write, what of
them? They are each of them alone, though they hardly know it yet.
The little unnamed son, who opened his eyes upon the world six
years ago, to close them in a few hours, where and what is he now?
Is he somewhere, anywhere? Does he know of the joy and sorrow he
has brought into our lives? I would fain believe it . . . these are
profitless thoughts, of one staring into the abyss. Somehow these
bright weeks have been to me a dreary time. I am well in health;
nothing ails me. It is six months since my last book was published,