wonder, I say to myself, as I go wearily upstairs, why so many good and moral people irritate us so intensely? why we would rather be beaten by some hands than stroked by others? Their very virtues make us feel vicious, and their pious and proper sentiments impel us to flatly contradict every word they say. In my bedroom I stand looking out at the night, that seems to enwrap me like a cold, dark mantle, while the stars draw my soul up to them. I feel not so much a miserable, passionate, struggling speck of humanity, as a disembodied spirit that is wandering abroad, searching after, crying after, Paul, my darling—who will never be my lover any more.
All night long I lie awake, hearing ghostly steps coming up the carriage-drive, hearing ghostly hands beating against my window-pane—ghostly voices that whisper in my ear. My ears are strained to the faintest echo of sound in the world without. Shall I not hear him towards the morning coming lightly over the snow to tell me he has returned? I know that he is not dead, or he would have come to me in that supreme wrenching of soul from body, as I should go to him straight if I died to-night.
The morning breaks, grey and chill.
"How shall I bear it?" I cry aloud, as I sit up in my bed, and rock myself to and fro in my restless agony—"with all these long days and nights to live through before Christmas morning comes!"
CHAPTER IV.
Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!"
It is Christmas morning, and I am leaning out of the open window of the dining-room into the cold clear air, looking at the clean
