at one end,
she at the other; the curtains drawn away from me that I may breathe.
Ah, I have been stifled so long! They look down on me, all those old
dead and gone faces, those portraits on the wall,--look all from their
frames at me, the last term of the race, the vanishing summit of their
design. A fierce weapon thrust into the world for evil has that race
been,--from the great gray Willoughby, threatening with his iron eyes
there, to me, the sharp apex of its suffering. A fierce, glittering
blade! Why I alone singled for this curse? Rank blossom, rank decay,
they answer, but falsely. I lie here, through no fault of mine, blasted
by disease, the dread with no relief. A hundred ancestors look from my
walls, and see in me the centre of their lives, of all their little
splendor, of their sins and follies; what slept in them wakes in me. Oh,
let me sleep too!

How long could I live and lose nothing? I saw my face in the hand-glass
this morning,--more lovely than health fashioned it;--transparent skin,
bounding blood, with its fire burning behind the eye, on cheek, on
lip,--a beauty that every pang has aggravated, heightened, sharpened, to
a superb intensity, flushing, rapid, unearthly,--a brilliancy to be
dreamed of. Like a great autumn-leaf I fall, for I am dying,--dying!
Yes, death finds me more beautiful than life made me; but have I lost
nothing? Great Heaven, I have lost all!

A fancy comes to me, that to-day was my birthday. I have forgotten to
mark time; but if it was, I am thirty-two years old. I remember
birthdays of a child,--loving, cordial days. No one remembers to-day.
Why should they? But I ache for a little love. Thirty-two,--that is
young to die! I am too fair, too rich, for death!--not his fit spoil! Is
there no one to save me? no help? can I not escape? Ah, what a vain
eagerness! what an idle hope! Fall back again, heart! Escape? I do not
desire to. Come, come, kind rest! I am tired.

That cap-string has loosened now, and all this golden cataract of hair
has rushed out over the piled pillows. It oppresses and terrifies me. If
I could speak, it seems to me that I would ask Louise to come and bind
it up. Won't she turn and see?

Have I been asleep? What is this in my hands? The amber gods? Oh, yes! I
asked to see them again; I like their smell, I think. It is ten years I
have had them. They enchant; but the charm will not last; nothing will.
I rubbed a little yellow smoke out of them,--a cloud that h