"I say! Look who's here!" my young hopeful exclaimed with a low whistle, wagging his head from side to side. The other boy merely stared in dumb awe, twisting his wet cap in his fingers. That gawk and Alicia are the same age, yet—the difference!
"Let her go through and unmask," I waved them aside and Alicia, with her head down, ran laughing out of the room.
I returned to my chair and sat down as one dazed. My policy henceforth will be to frown on suchlike tricks—though I myself had instigated this one. What an occupation for a man of books and tranquillity—one who desired to write of Brunetto Latini—to add to the body of scholarship upon Dante!
And suddenly I put my head down on my arms and laughed long and I am sure quite meaninglessly.
For if I were a woman, I might just as easily have sobbed in a way to tear out the heart. Decidedly the suspense of awaiting news from Dibdin regarding Pendleton must be undermining my nerves.
I am gey ill to live with.
I seem to myself like the irascible old gentlemen in the comedies with the prithees and monstrous fine epigrams, forever taking snuff—save that there is no comedy about me.
I take down books and I cannot read them. What pleasure I used to experience in leaving some of the leaves uncut in fine editions so as to cut them on further readings! I have tried to extract that joy by cutting some recently, but there is no joy in it.
Why am I so certain that Pendleton will take away all these that I love and leave me desolate? All his past seems to argue against the probability. Yet constantly I see before me the picture of their going in a body with that man while I stand speechless, attempting to smile benignantly. How we dramatize ourselves, even the least imaginative amongst us! And all the time I feel as though great gouts of blood were dripping, dripping from my heart in nameless anguish.
Alicia, that divine child, is watching me unobtrusively though closely, whenever she can. She surrounds me with comforts and attentions. But like some sick owl, I prefer to brood alone.