fever of the garden in the scent of and the white advancing sleek of mood � � he reminds me of the dark eyed who comes into a tavern silently and standing in a comer plays long wild strains i see him not i hardly hear him my thoughts are far away my soul desiring nothing i care not to lift my head why should i break the spell of my meditations but i feel that his dark eyes are fixed upon me and little by little in spite of my will my senses awake a strange is in progress within me thoughts and desires that i dread of whose existence in myself i was not aware whose existence in myself i would fain deny come swiftly and come slowly and settle and and become part of me � � fear is upon me but i may not pause i am hurried on is impossible and the wringing of hands are vain has abandoned me my worst nature is uppermost i see it floating up from the depths of my being a but i can do nothing to check or control � � � has abandoned me i am the prey to that dark eyed and his abominable fiddle and seizing my bank notes my gold and my silver i throw him all i have i bid him cease and fall back exhausted give me the ring give me the ring its palaces its sea and forests and the therein its giants and and its and its � surely it is nearer to life or go into the meadows with and listen to the lark sunday evening in london and the we are nearer life lying by a shady brook hearing the in the meadows and the yellow hammer in the thicket than we are now under this oppressive sky this street is like s garden here too are flower maidens � ere is the atmosphere of come let us go let us seek the the moon haunted we shall see through have you ever stood in the p of and watched the moonlight among the trees and imagined a comedy by acted there a goodly company of and fine ladies seated under the trees watching it � very one has come there in painted chairs the are gathered together at a little distance my dear friend you re talking so much that you don t see those who are passing us that girl she who has just turned to look back it is delicious still upon the air she is as pretty a girl as any that ever came in a chair to see a comedy by the comedy very little it is always the same comedy and it is always interesting the in a summer night under a full moon is very like garden come if you be not s chapter i wa in london when my brother wrote me that mother was ill she was not in any immediate danger he said but if a change for the worse were to take place and it were necessary for me to come over he would send a a few hours after a was handed to me it contained four words at once � so mother is dying i muttered to myself and i stood at gaze myself taken into her room by a nurse and given a chair by the bedside a hand lying outside the bed which i should have to hold until i heard the death rattle and saw her face become quiet for ever this was my first vision but in the midst of my packing i remembered that mother might linger for days the dear friend who lies in the church yard imder the downs lingered for weeks every day her husband and her children saw her dying under their eyes why should not this misfortune be mine i know not to what god but i prayed all night in the train and on board the boat i got into the train at the praying it is impossible at least for me to find words to express the agony of mind i endured on that journey words can only at it but i think that any one possessed of any of life or who has any gift of imagination will be able to guess at the terror that haunted me � terror of what � not so much that my mother might die nor hope that she might live but just that i might arrive in time to see her die in this confession i am afraid i shall seem hard and selfish to some that will be because many people lack imagination or the leisure to try to understand that there are not only many degrees of sensibility but many kinds and it is doubtful if any reader can say with truth any more than that my sensibility is not his or hers it is my privilege to be sympathetic with ideas i do not share and in certain moods i approach those who take a sad pleasure in last words good and at looking on the dead in my present mood it seems to me that it is not unlikely that my mother s last good bye and her death appeared to me more awful in imagination than it would have ever done in reality indeed there can be hardly any doubt that this is so for we are only of what is happening reality clouds our actions our perception we can see clearly only when we look back or forwards there is something very merciful about reality if there were not we should not be able to live at all but to the journey how shall i tell it the third part must have been the most painful so clearly do i remember it the curious agony of mind caused by a sudden recognition of objects long forgotten � a tree 