and I have taken a deliberate holiday; but always before, my mind,
the strain of a book once taken off it, has begun to sprout and
burgeon with new ideas and schemes: but now, for the first time in
my life, my mind and heart remain bare and arid. I seem to have
drifted into a dreary silence. It is not that things have been less
beautiful, but beauty seems to have had no message, no significance
for me. The people that I have seen have come and gone like ghosts
and puppets. I have had no curiosity about them, their occupations
and thoughts, their hopes and lives; it has not seemed worth while
to be interested, in a life which appears so short, and which leads
nowhere. It seems morbid to write thus, but I have not been either
morbid or depressed. It has been an easy life, the life of the last
few months, without effort or dissatisfaction, but without zest. It
is a mental tiredness, I suppose. I have written myself out, and
the cistern must fill again. Yet I have had no feeling of fatigue.
It would have been almost better to have had something to bear; but
I am richer than I need be, Maud and the children have been in
perfect health and happiness, I have been well and strong. I shall
hope that the familiar scene, the pleasant activities of home-life
will bring the desire back. I realise how much the fabric of my
life is built upon my writing, and write I must. Well, I have said
enough; the pleasure of these entries is that one can look back to
them, and see the movement of the current of life in a bygone day.
I have an immense mass of arrears to make up, in the form of
letters and business, but I want to survey the ground; and the
survey is not a very happy one this morning; though if I made a
list of my benefits and the reverse, like Robinson Crusoe, the
credit side would be full of good things, and the debit side nearly
empty.