Sep. 21, 1900. I am climbing, climbing, hour by hour, slowly and cautiously, out of the darkness, as a man climbs up some dizzy crag, never turning his head—yet not back to life! I shall not achieve that.
How strange it would seem to others that I can care to write thus—it seems strange even to myself. If ever, in life, I looked on to these twilight hours, with the end coming slowly nearer, I thought I should lie in a kind of stupor of mind and body, indifferent to everything. I am indifferent, with the indifference of one in whom desire seems to be dead; but my mind is, or seems, almost preternaturally clear; and the old habit, of trying to analyse, to describe, anything that I see or realise distinctly is too strong for me. I have asked for pencil and paper; they demur, but yield; and so I write a little, which relieves the occasional physical restlessness I feel; it induces a power of tranquil reverie, and the hours pass, I hardly[246] know how. The light changes; the morning freshness becomes the grave and solid afternoon, and so dies into twilight; till out of the dark alleys steals the gentle evening, dark-eyed and with the evening star tangled in her hair, full of shy sweet virginal thoughts and mysteries ... and then the night, and the day again.
Do I grieve, do I repine, do I fear? No, I can truthfully say, I do not. I hardly seem to feel. Almost the only feeling left me is the old childlike trustfulness in mother and nurse. I do not seem to need to tell them anything. One or other sits near me. I feel my mother’s eyes dwell upon me, till I look up and smile; but between our very minds there runs, as it were, an airy bridge, on which the swift thoughts, the messengers of love, speed to and fro.............