Man and Maid

How I must have sunk in the years which followed those dear old days,

ever even to have found divertisement among the people like Maurice and

the fluffies. Surely even a one-eyed and one-legged man ought to be able

to do something for his country politically, it suddenly seemed to

me--and what a glorious picture to gaze at!--If I could some day go into

Parliament, and have Alathea beside me, to give me inspiration and help

me to the best in myself. How her poise would tell in English political

society! How her brain and her power of exercising her critical

faculties! Apart from the fact that I love every inch of her wisp of a

body--What an asset that mind would be to any man!--And I dreamed and

dreamed in the firelight--things all filled with sentiment and

exaltation, which of course no fellow could ever say aloud, or let

anyone know of--A journal is certainly an immense comfort, and I do not

believe I could have gone through this hideous year of my life without

it.

How I would love to have Alathea for my wife--and have children--It

can't be possible that I have written that! I loathe children in the

abstract--they bore me to death--Even Solonge de Clerté's two

entertaining angels--but to have a son--with Alathea's eyes----God! how

the thought makes me feel!--How I would like to sit and talk with her of

how we should bring him up--I reached out my hand and picked up a volume

of Charles Lamb and read "Dream Children"--and as I finished I felt that

idiotic choky sensation which I have only begun to know since something

in me has been awakened by Alathea--or since my nerves have been on the

rack--I don't remember ever feeling much touched, or weak, or silly,

before the war--.

And now what have I to face--?

A will, stronger, or as strong as my own--A prejudice of the deepest

which I cannot explain away--A knowledge that I have no power to retain

the thing I love--No guerdon to hold out to her mentally or

physically--Nothing but the material thing of money--which because of

her great unselfishness and desire to benefit her loved ones, she might

be forced to consider. My only possibility of obtaining her at all is to

buy her with money. And when once bought,--when I had her here in my

house,--would I have the strength to resist the temptation to take

advantage of the situation?--Could I go on day after day never touching

her,--never having any joys?--until the greatness of my love somehow

melted her dislike and contempt of me--?