nows whither. Maggie sate with her hand in mine; and in
my dumb and frozen grief, almost without a thought of anything but a
deep and cold resentment, a hatred of death and the maker of love and
death alike, I became aware that both she and Maud had me in their
thoughts, that my sorrow was even more to them than their own--while I
was cut off from them; from life and hope alike, in a place of darkness
and in the deep.

August 19, 1889.

I saw Alec no more; I would remember him as he was in life, not the
stiffened waxen mask of my beloved. The days passed in a dull stupor of
grief, mechanically, grimly, in a sort of ghastly greyness. And I who
thought that I had sounded the depths of pain! I could not realise it,
could not believe that all would not somehow be as before. Maud and
Maggie speak of him to each other and to me . . . it is inconceivable.
With a dull heartache I have collected and put away all the child's
things--his books, his toys, his little possessions. I followed the
little coffin to the grave. The uncontrollable throb of emotion came
over me at the words, "I am the resurrection and the life." It was a
grey, gusty day; a silent crowd waited to see us pass. The great
churchyard elms roared and swayed, and I found myself watching idly how
the clergyman's hood was blown sideways by the wind. I looked into the
deep, dark pit, and saw the little coffin lying there, all in a dumb
dream. The holy words fell vacuously on my ears. "Man walketh in a vain
shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain"--that was all I felt. I seem
to believe nothing, to hope nothing. I do not believe I shall ever see
or draw near to the child again, and yet the thought of him alone,
apart, uncomforted, lies cold on my heart. Maud is wonderful to me; her
love does not seem to suffer eclipse; she does everything, she smiles,
she speaks; she feels, she says, the presence of the child near her and
about her; that means nothing to me; the soul appears to me to have
gone out utterly like a blown flame, mingling with the unseen life, as
the little body we loved will be mingled with the dust.

I cannot say that I endure agony; it is rather as if I had received a
blow so fierce that it drove sensation away; I seem to see the bruise,
watch the blood flow, and wonder why I do not suffer. The suffering
will come, I doubt not; but meanwhile I am only mutely grateful that I
do not feel more, suffer more. It does not even seem to me to have
drawn