it almost seems to me as if I had lost her too.

August 30, 1889.

Our route lay through Cambridge; we had to change there and wait; so we
drove down to the town to look at my old college. There it lay, the
charming, pretty, quiet place, blinking lazily out of its deep-set
barred windows in the bright sun, just the same, it seemed, as ever,
though perhaps a touch more mellow and more settled; every corner and
staircase haunted with old ghosts for me. I could put a name to every
set of rooms, flash an incident to every door and window. In my heavy,
apathetic mood the memory of my life there seemed like a memory of some
one else, moving in golden light, talking and laughing in firelit
rooms, lingering in moonlit nights by the bridge, wondering what life
was going to bring. It seemed like turning the pages of some old
illuminated book with bright pictures, where the very sunlight is the
purest and stiffest gold. The men I knew, the friends I lived with,
admired, loved--where are they? scattered to all parts of the earth,
parted utterly from me, some of them dead, alas! and silent. It came
over me with a thrill of sharpest pain to think how I had pictured Alec
here, living the same free and beautiful life, tasting the same
innocent pleasures, with the bright, sweet world opening upon him. In
that calm, sunny afternoon, life seemed a strange phantasmal business,
and I myself a revenant from some thin, unsubstantial world. A door
opened, and an old Don, well known to me in those days, hardly altered,
it seemed, came out and trotted across the court, looking suspiciously
to left and right as he used to do. Had he been doing the same thing
ever since, reading the same books, talking the same innocent gossip? I
had not the heart to greet him, and he passed me by unrecognising. We
peeped into the hall through the screen. I could see where I used to
sit, the same dark pictures looking down. We went to the chapel, with
its noble classical woodwork, the great carved panels, the angels'
heads, the huge, stately reredos. Some one, thank God, was playing
softly on the organ, and we sate to listen. The sweet music flowed over
my sad heart in a healing tide. Yes, it was not meaningless, after all,
this strange life, with the good years shining in their rainbow halo,
even though the path led into darkness and formless shadow. I seemed to
look back on it all, as the traveller on the hill looks out from the
skirts of the cloud upon the