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side. Like this afternoon.
I sit at my window and look out upon the strip of beach, the
hauledup fishing boats and the nets hung out to dry looming
vague in the starlight, and I hear the surf's rhythmical moan a
few yards beyond; and it beats into my ears the idiot phrase that
has recurred all the evening.
But why should I be mad? For filling my soul with God's utmost
glory of earth and sea and sky? For filling my heart with purest
pleasure in the intimate companionship of fresh and fragrant
maidenhood? For giving myself up for once to a dream of sense
clouded by never a thought that was not serenely fair?
For feeling young again?
I shall read myself to sleep with _La Dame de Monsoreau_, which I
have procured from the circulating library in the Rue Alphonse
Karr(the literary horticulturist is the genius loci and the
godfather of my landlady)and I will empty flagons with Pere
Gorenflot and ride on errands of life and death with Chicot,
prince of jesters, and walk lovingly between the valiant Bussy
and Henri Quatre. By this, if by nothing else, I recognise the
beneficence of the high godsthey have given us tired men Dumas.
Something is wrong with Antoinette. The dinner she served up
this evening was all but uneatable. Something is wrong with
Stenson, who has taken to playing his lugubrious hymntunes on
the concertina while I am in the house; I won't have it.
Something is wrong with the cat. He wanders round the house like
a lost soul, sniffing at everything. This evening he actually
jumped onto the dinnertable, looked at me out of his one eye, in
which all the desolation of two was concentrated, and miaowed
heartrendingly in my face. Something is wrong with the house,
with my pens which will not write, with my books which have the
air of dry bones in a charnelhouse, with the MS. of my History
of Renaissance Morals, which stands on the writingtable like a
dusty monument to the futility of human endeavour. Something is
wrong with me.
Something, too, is wrong with Judith, who has just returned from
her stay with the Willoughbys. I have been to see her this
evening and found her of uncertain temper, and inclined to be
contradictious. She accused me of being dull. I answered that
the autumn world outside was drenched with miserable rain. How
could man be sprightly under such conditions?
In this room, said Judith, with its bright fire and drawn
curtains there is no miserable rain, and no autumn save in our
hearts.
Why in our hearts? I asked.

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