Fear sifts through my fingers and mind.
What am I—a lie? Was she a lie? Was life? The cloak?
Why haven’t I, if I am sure of myself, seen to it that my plays have been published? I leave nothing. Nothing! Antony, Hamlet, Macbeth, Winter’s Tale, Romeo...not one. I must speak to Jonson and Alleyn. I must write to them at once!
Fog lay about in pieces like pieces of my life. Ground fog.
In the starlight I glared at my hands and saw that they were swollen, as they have often been lately.
Wasn’t that snow falling, flakes of morning?
I tried to remember Ellen’s face, tried to feel her presence.
When Ann brought me breakfast I could not look at her though she spoke to me kindly.
I write with costly effort—hands worse. I am cold. My mind staggers.
To the oriel—to look outside.