ch I am shaken with inward terror. Then, when I do
speak again, it is to say something trivial in the lightest tone I can
command, but I feel as if a flame were rushing over my face--that I am
going to blush. If he were to seize this moment to look me boldly in the
eyes, I should be lost!

'I played a good deal this evening, chiefly Bach and Schumann. As on the
first evening, he sat in a low chair to the right but a little behind
me. From time to time, at the end of each piece, he rose and leaned over
me, turning the pages to point out another Fugue or Intermezzo. Then he
would sit down again and listen, motionless, profoundly absorbed, his
eyes fixed on me, forcing me to _feel_ his presence.

'Did he understand, I wonder, how much of myself, of my thoughts and
griefs found voice in the music of others?

'It is a threatening night. A hot moist wind blows over the garden and
its dull moaning dies away in the darkness only to begin again more
loudly. The tops of the cypresses wave to and fro under an almost inky
sky in which the stars burn with feeble ray. A band of clouds spans the
heavens from side to side, ragged, contorted, blacker than the sky, like
the tragic locks of a Medusa. The sea is invisible through the darkness,
but it sobs as if in measureless and uncontrollable grief--forsaken and
alone.

'Why this unreasoning terror? The night seems to warn me of approaching
disaster, a warning that finds its echo in a dim remorse within my
heart.

'But I always take comfort from my daughter, she heals my fever like
some blessed balm.

'She is asleep now, shaded from the lamp which shines with the soft
radiance of the moon. Her face--white with dewy freshness of a white
rose, seems half buried in the masses of her dark hair. One would think
the eyelids were too delicately transparent to veil the splendour of her
eyes. As I lean over her and gaze at her, all the sinister voices of the
night are silenced for me, and the silence is measured only by her
gentle respiration.

'She feels the vicinity of her mother. The longer I contemplate her, the
more does she assume in my eyes the aspect of some ethereal creature, of
a being formed of "such stuff as dreams are made of."

'She shall grow up nourished and enwrapped by the flame of my love--of
my great, my _only_ love----

'_September 24th._--I can form no resolve--I can decide upon no plan of
action. I am simply abandoning myself a little to this new sentiment,
shut