_I_
believe in the Dream too!

"Suppose I say to him, 'I think as you think. I say what you said in
your letter to me, Let us part before the harm is done. Leave me
before the Third Vision of the Dream comes true. Leave me, and put the
mountains and the seas between you and the man who bears your name!'

"Suppose, on the other side, that his love for me makes him reckless of
everything else? Suppose he says those desperate words again, which I
understand now: What _is_ to be, _will_ be. What have I to do with it,
and what has she?' Suppose--suppose--

"I won't write any more. I hate writing. It doesn't relieve me--it makes
me worse. I'm further from being able to think of all that I _must_
think of than I was when I sat down. It is past midnight. To-morrow has
come already; and here I am as helpless as the stupidest woman living!
Bed is the only fit place for me.

"Bed? If it was ten years since, instead of to-day; and if I had married
Midwinter for love, I might be going to bed now with nothing heavier on
my mind than a visit on tiptoe to the nursery, and a last look at night
to see if my children were sleeping quietly in their cribs. I wonder
whether I should have loved my children if I had ever had any? Perhaps,
yes--perhaps, no. It doesn't matter."

"Tuesday morning, ten o'clock.--Who was the man who invented laudanum?
I thank him from the bottom of my heart whoever he was. If all the
miserable wretches in pain of body and mind, whose comforter he has
been, could meet together to sing his praises, what a chorus it would
be! I have had six delicious hours of oblivion; I have woke up with my
mind composed; I have written a perfect little letter to Midwinter; I
have drunk my nice cup of tea, with a real relish of it; I have dawdled
over my morning toilet with an exquisite sense of relief--and all
through the modest little bottle of Drops, which I see on my bedroom
chimney-piece at this moment. 'Drops,' you are a darling! If I love
nothing else, I love _you_.

"My letter to Midwinter has been sent through the post; and I have told
him to reply to me in the same manner.

"I feel no anxiety about his answer--he can only answer in one way.
I have asked for a little time to consider, because my family
circumstances require some consideration, in his interests as well as
in mine. I have engaged to tell him what those circumstances are (what
shall I say, I wonder?) when we next meet; and I have requested him in
th