path, it was not to make us cold and bitter-hearted. Infinite
Love! it came near to me in that hour, and clasped me to a sorrowful,
tender, beating Heart. I read Maud, at her request, "Evelyn Hope," and
the strong and patient love, that dwells so serenely and softly upon
the incidents of death, yet without the least touch of morbidity and
gloom, treating death itself as a quiet slumber of the soul, taught me
for a moment how to be brave.

"You will wake and remember, and understand,"--my voice broke and tears
came, unbidden tears which I did not even desire to conceal--and in
that moment the spirit of my wife came near to me, and soul looked into
the eyes of soul, with a perfect and bewildering joy, the very joy of
God.

October 10, 1889.

We have had the kindest, dearest letters from our neighbours about our
last misfortune. But no one seems to anticipate that we shall be
obliged to leave the place. They naturally suppose that I shall be able
to make as large an income as I want by writing. And so I suppose I
could. I talked the whole matter over with Maud, and said I would abide
by her decision. I confessed that I had an extreme repugnance to the
thought of turning out books for money, books which I knew to be
inferior; but I also said that if she could not bear to leave the
place, I had little doubt that I could, for the present at all events,
make enough money to render it possible for us to continue to live
there. I said frankly that it would be a relief to me to leave a house
so sadly haunted by memory, and that I should myself prefer to live
elsewhere, framing our household on very simple lines--and to let the
power of writing come back if it would, not to try and force it. It
would be a dreadful prospect to me to live thus, overshadowed by
recollection, working dismally for money; but I suppose it would be
possible, even bracing. Maud did not hesitate: she spoke quite frankly;
on the one hand the very associations, which I dread most, were
evidently to her a source of sad delight; and the thought of strangers
living in rooms so hallowed by grief was like a profanation. Then there
was the fact of all her relations with our friends and neighbours; but
she said quite simply that my feeling outweighed it all, and that she
would far rather begin life afresh somewhere else, than put me in the
position I described. We determined to try and find a small house in
the neighbourhood of her own old home in Gloucester