p
warm. First I tried to write, but found it too cold. My hand turned to
ice on the paper.

What tricks the wind did play with the old place! It came rushing up the
forsaken alley with a sound like the feet of a hurrying crowd of people
who stopped suddenly at the door. I felt as if a lot of curious folk had
arranged themselves just outside and were staring up at my windows. Then
they took to their heels again and fled whispering and laughing down the
lane, only, however, to return with the next gust of wind and repeat
their impertinence. On the other side of my room, a single square window
opens into a sort of shaft, or well, that measures about six feet across
to the back wall of another house. Down this funnel the wind dropped,
and puffed and shouted. Such noises I never heard before. Between these
two entertainments I sat over the fire in a great-coat, listening to the
deep booming in the chimney. It was like being in a ship at sea, and I
almost looked for the floor to rise in undulations and rock to and fro.

* * * * *

Oct. 12.--I wish I were not quite so lonely--and so poor. And yet I love
both my loneliness and my poverty. The former makes me appreciate the
companionship of the wind and rain, while the latter preserves my liver
and prevents me wasting time in dancing attendance upon women. Poor,
ill-dressed men are not acceptable "attendants."

My parents are dead, and my only sister is--no, not dead exactly, but
married to a very rich man. They travel most of the time, he to find his
health, she to lose herself. Through sheer neglect on her part she has
long passed out of my life. The door closed when, after an absolute
silence of five years, she sent me a cheque for L50 at Christmas. It was
signed by her husband! I returned it to her in a thousand pieces and in
an unstamped envelope. So at least I had the satisfaction of knowing
that it cost her something! She wrote back with a broad quill pen that
covered a whole page with three lines, "You are evidently as cracked as
ever, and rude and ungrateful into the bargain." It had always been my
special terror lest the insanity in my father's family should leap
across the generations and appear in me. This thought haunted me, and
she knew it. So after this little exchange of civilities the door
slammed, never to open again. I heard the crash it made, and, with it,
the falling from the walls of my heart of many little bits of china wi