varying moods
from the 15th of May up to to-day.

The presence of the 'rickshaw filled me by turns with horror, blind
fear, a dim sort of pleasure, and utter despair. I dared not leave
Simla; and I knew that my stay there was killing me. I knew, moreover,
that it was my destiny to die slowly and a little every day. My only
anxiety was to get the penance over as quietly as might be. Alternately
I hungered for a sight of Kitty and watched her outrageous flirtations
with my successor--to speak more accurately, my successors--with amused
interest. She was as much out of my life as I was out of hers. By day
I wandered with Mrs. Wessington almost content. By night I implored
Heaven to let me return to the world as I used to know it. Above all
these varying moods lay the sensation of dull, numbing wonder that the
seen and the unseen should mingle so strangely on this earth to hound
one poor soul to its grave.

* * * * *

_August 27th._--Heatherlegh has been indefatigable in his attendance on
me; and only yesterday told me that I ought to send in an application
for sick-leave. An application to escape the company of a phantom! A
request that the Government would graciously permit me to get rid of
five ghosts and an airy 'rickshaw by going to England! Heatherlegh's
proposition moved me to almost hysterical laughter. I told him that
I should await the end quietly at Simla; and I am sure that the end is
not far off. Believe me that I dread its advent more than any word can
say; and I torture myself nightly with a thousand speculations as to
the manner of my death.

Shall I die in my bed decently and as an English gentlemen should die;
or, in one last walk on the Mall, will my soul be wrenched from me to
take its place for ever and ever by the side of that ghastly phantasm?
Shall I return to my old lost allegiance in the next world, or shall
I meet Agnes loathing her and bound to her side through all eternity?
Shall we two hover over the scene of our lives till the end of time? As
the day of my death draws nearer, the intense horror that all living
flesh feels towards escaped spirits from beyond the grave grows more and
more powerful. It is an awful thing to go down quick among the dead with
scarcely one half of your life completed. It is a thousand times more
awful to wait as I do in your midst, for I know not what unimaginable
terror. Pity me, at least on the score of my "delusion," for I know