And this state of semi-consciousness--infinitely
more unbearable than real sleeplessness--continued throughout the night.
'Nevertheless, when I heard my little girl's morning call, I did not
answer, but pretended to be sound asleep, so that I need not rise, so
that I might remain a few minutes longer in bed and thus retard for a
while the inexorable certainty of the realities of life. The torments of
thought and imagination seemed to me less cruel than those, so
impossible to foresee, which awaited me in these last two days.
'A little while later, Delfina came in on tip-toe, holding her breath.
She looked at me and then whispered to Dorothy, with a little fond
tremor in her voice--
'"She is fast asleep! We will not wake her!"
'Night. I do not believe I have a spark of life left in me. As I came
upstairs I felt, at each step, as if every drop of blood had left my
veins. I am as weak as one at the point of death.
'Courage! courage!--only a few hours more. Manuel will be here to-morrow
morning. We shall leave on Sunday, and on Monday I shall be with my
mother.
'Just now, I returned him two or three books he had lent me. In the
volume of Shelley I underlined with my nail the last two lines of a
certain verse and put a mark in the page--
"And forget me, for I _can never_--
Be thine!"
'_October 9th.
Pages:
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232