Journal, February 12, 1828.—Moore is in town. By his advice I disclosed my discoveries to Jane. How strangely are we made! She is horror-struck and miserable at losing my friendship; and yet how unpardonably she trifled with my feelings, and made me all falsely a fable to others.
The visit of Moore has been an agreeable variety to my monotonous life. I see few people—Lord Dillon, G. Paul, the Robinsons, voilà tout.
Mrs. Shelley to Mrs. Hogg.
Since Monday I have been ceaselessly occupied by the scene begun and interrupted, which filled me with a pain that now thrills me as I revert to it. I then strove to speak, but your tears overcame me, whilst the struggle gave me an appearance of coldness.
If I revert to my devotion to you, it is to prove that no worldly motives could estrange me from the partner of my miseries. Often, having you at Kentish Town, I have wept from the overflow of affection; often thanked God who had given you to me. Could any but yourself have destroyed such engrossing and passionate love? And what are the consequences of the change?
When first I heard that you did not love me, every hope of my life deserted me. The depression I sank under, and to which I am now a prey, undermines my health. How many hours this dreary winter I have paced my solitary room, driven nearly to madness, and I could not expel from my mind the memories of harrowing import that one after another intruded themselves! It was not long ago that, eagerly desiring death, though death should only be oblivion, I thought that how to purchase oblivion of what was revealed to me last July, a tortuous death would be a bed of roses.
········
Do not ask me, I beseech you, a detail of the revelations made to me. Some of those most painful you made to several; others, of less import, but which tended more, perhaps, than the more important to show that you loved me not, were made only to two.
I could not write of these, far less speak of them. If any doubt remain on your mind as to what I know, write to Isabel,[10] and she will inform you of the extent of her communication to me. I have been an altered being since then; long I thought that almost a deathblow was given, so heavily and unremittingly did the thought press on and sting me; but one lives on through all to be a wreck.
Though I was conscious that, having spoken of me as you did, you could not love me, I could not easily detach myself from the atmosphere of light and beauty that ever surrounded you. Now I tried to keep you, feeling the while that I had lost you; but you penetrated the change, and I owe it to you not to disguise the cause. What will become of us, my poor girl?