dark against the fiery glow,
and when the further landscape lies smiling, lapt in mist, on the verge
of dreams; that moment always seems to speak to me with a personal
voice. "Yes," it seems to say, "I am here and everywhere--larger,
sweeter, truer, more gracious than anything you have ever dreamed of or
hoped for--but the time to know all is not yet." I cannot explain the
feeling or interpret it; but it has sometimes seemed to me, in such
moments, that I am, in very truth, not a child of God, but a part of
Himself--separated from Him for a season, imprisoned, for some strange
and beautiful purpose, in the 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 angeli