chains of matter, remembering faintly and obscurely something that
I have lost, as a man strives to recall a beautiful dream that has
visited him. It is then that one most desires to be strong and
free, to be infinitely patient and tender and loving, to be
different. And then one comes back to the world with a sense of jar
and shock, to broken purposes, and dull resentments, to unkindly
thoughts, and people who do not even pretend to wish one well. I
have been trying with all my might in these desolate weeks to be
brave and affectionate and tender, and I have not succeeded. It is
easy enough, when one is happily occupied for a part of the day,
but when one is restless, dissatisfied, impatient, ineffective, it
is a constant and a weary effort. And what is more, I dislike
sympathy. I would rather bear a thing in solitude and silence. I
have no self-pity, and it is humiliating and weakening to be
pitied. Yet of course Maud knows that I am unhappy; and the
wretchedness of it is that it has introduced a strain into our
relations which I have never felt before. I sit reading, trying to
pass the hours, trying to stifle thought. I look up and see her
eyes fixed on me full of compassion and love--and I do not want
compassion. Maud knows it, divines it all; but she can no more keep
her compassion hidden than I can keep my unrest hidden. I have
grown irritable, suspicious, hard to live with. Yet with all my
heart and soul I desire to be patient, tolerant, kindly, sweet-
tempered. FitzGerald said somewhere that ill-health makes all of us
villains. This is the worst of it, that for all my efforts I get
weaker, more easily vexed, more discontented. I do not and cannot
trace the smallest benefit which results to me or any one else from
my unhappiness. The shadow of it has even fallen over my relations
with the children, who are angelically good. Maggie, with that
divine instinct which women possess--what a perfectly beautiful