of a hair's-breadth out of order--that's all!

_Dec. 20th.--_

I have been again; I have heard the music; I have been inside the
church; I have seen Her! I can no longer doubt my senses. Why should I?
Those pedants say that the dead are dead, the past is past. For them,
yes; but why for me?--why for a man who loves, who is consumed with the
love of a woman?--a woman who, indeed--yes, let me finish the sentence.
Why should there not be ghosts to such as can see them? Why should she
not return to the earth, if she knows that it contains a man who thinks
of, desires, only her?

A hallucination? Why, I saw her, as I see this paper that I write upon;
standing there, in the full blaze of the altar. Why, I heard the rustle
of her skirts, I smelt the scent of her hair, I raised the curtain
which was shaking from her touch. Again I missed her. But this time, as
I rushed out into the empty moonlit street, I found upon the church
steps a rose--the rose which I had seen in her hand the moment
before--I felt it, smelt it; a rose, a real, living rose, dark red and
only just plucked. I put it into water when I returned, after having
kissed it, who knows how many times? I placed it on the top of the
cupboard; I determined not to look at it for twenty-four hours lest it
should be a delusion. But I must see it again; I must.... Good Heavens!
this is horrible, horrible; if I had found a skeleton it could not have
been worse! The rose, which last night seemed freshly plucked, full of
color and perfume, is brown, dry--a thing kept for centuries between
the leaves of a book--it has crumbled into dust between my fingers.
Horrible, horrible! But why so, pray? Did I not know that I was in love
with a woman dead three hundred years? If I wanted fresh roses which