uncle Robert's serenity. It is the deadly sameness of a soul to
which nothing is strange and wonderful and a woman's heart is not so
interesting as an advertisement column in the newspaper. He never
cares to look into mine. I do not pretend that there is anything
remarkable in it, but if he were to open it he would find something
worth having. This absence of curiosity to explore what is in me
kills me. What must the bliss of a wife be when her husband
searches her to her inmost depths, when she sees tender questions in
his eyes, when he asks her DO YOU REALLY FEEL SO? and she looks at
him and replies AND YOU? I could endure the uneventfulness of
outward life if anything not unpleasant HAPPENED between me and
Charles. Nothing happens. Something happens in my relationship to
my dog. I pat him and he is pleased; he barks for joy when I go
out. I cannot live with anybody with whom I am always on exactly
the same even terms--no rising, no falling, mere stagnation. I am
dead, but it is death without its sleep and peace. Fool, fool that
I was! I cannot go on. What shall I do? If Charles drank I might
cure or tolerate him; if he went after another woman I might win him
back. I can lay hold of nothing.

A child? Ah no! I have longed unspeakably for a child sometimes,
but not for one fathered by him.


BLACKDEEP, 24th January 1839.

I knew it all, but I dared not speak till you had spoken. Your
letter came when we were at breakfast. I could not open it, for my
heart told me what was in it. Jim wondered why I let it lie on the
table, and I made some excuse. After breakfast I took it upstairs