waiting for the beautiful melody as given first by the piano to reach the downward curve, and then coming in so deeply and sorrowfully with the slow rich voice. O God, O God that strange mixture of the soaring melody, so perfect in its pure algebra, and the sad, persistent meditative voice — there were tears in her eyes when she finished, and she had to turn away. Then the piano melody, finishing delicately and ethereally by itself … O God, if I could only get that sort of effect in a play — not melodramatically, or with stained-glass windows and paper snow, but naturally and simply by that superb use of the counterpoint of feeling and thought … Extraordinary sorrow in that song. That queer feeling that comes over me when something moves me too much — a kind of ache that seems to begin in the upper part of the mouth and throat, and yet it isn’t an ache so much as an unhappy consciousness which seems to be localized there, and then to spread downward through the whole aching body, a slowly flowering sort of echo in a hollow darkness, opening out with painful tentacles … MISERY … Now the red rim of sight discovers … No … Where the red rim of life discovers … no, sight, is better, suggesting … Where the rid rim of sight discovers … The void that swarms with shapes of death … And the departing spirit hovers … Batlike above the failing breath … Is it good or is it bad … Impossible to say. Nonsense. One more of the “Where the … There the” type of lyric. Give it up NOW … Dante would come into the next verse … How lovely she was, standing there under the dim lamp, elbows behind her, laughing, saying, “I’m going to be married”!.. Lost. Lost forever. That afternoon at the concert, if I had only … It would have been so simple … Or walking back from those absurd dancers; over Waterloo Bridge … “You know, I simply adore you!” … But it was too soon — it really was too soon … It’s never too soon … But I thought it was too soon … Is it really gone? that opportunity? Good heavens how often I re-enact all those scenes — impossible to persuade myself that they can be finished! The after-sense is so vivid. I was always expecting to meet her in the street — in the most unlikely places. Always looked at everybody in the street, or bus, or theater, expecting to see her. I even thought she might be on the ship again, — when I sailed back to America! And on Fifth Avenue, or at Aeolian Hall, or in the Museum — constantly feeling that I was on the point of encountering her, and that she was just round the corner, or behind the Rodin. She would be sure to be standing before the Manet parrot!.. Why is it?… The frightfully vivid experience, with its appalling after-sense, destroys one’s reason, one’s belief in time and space. Over and over again putting myself into the middle of that concert — the Bach concerto — sitting there in the Wigmore Hall. It was that morning just before lunch, while I was taking off one suit and putting on the other (which reeked of petrol, just back from the tailor) that the maid said, “Two ladies to see you, sir …” “Will you show them up?” … Who could it be? Americans? I was going to tea with Cynthia that afternoon — therefore it couldn’t possibly be she … I hurried dressing … It was she, and that artist’s daughter … “What a lovely room!” she cried, “and how extraordinary to find it in this street!” … The concert suggested … Delighted, but frightened — the complications … this other girl tall, grave, rather lovely. Ought I to ask them to lunch? No. Perhaps that had been their idea? Good heavens — I wonder! Anyway, I didn’t … “Meet in the entrance at …” … then they were gone, and I discovered my awful hasty unkemptness — hair unbrushed, coat collar kinked up, buttons unbuttoned … and at the concert … smelling abominably of petrol, sitting beside divine Cynthia and listening to the pure rapture of that music! Cynthia so near me — her heart within eighteen inches of mine, her sleeve touching my sleeve — so that I could feel the rhythm of her breathing — her dress once or twice brushing my foot. O God o God o God o God o God … Squirming. Twisting and stretching my wrists. The crucified Christ by Perugino in that chapel in Florence — the wrists quivering, squirming like a spitted worm, worming like an earthworm on a hook, the worm that convulsively embraces the hook, the worm that squirms, the worm that turns … Kwannon, Goddess of mercy, serene and beneficent idol, Cathayan peace! Smile down upon me, reach thy golden hands to me with the golden fingers, touch my eyes that they may see not, touch my mind that it may remember not, touch my heart and make it holy. Take away from me my gross and mischievous and ailing body, let me lie down before thee and sleep forever. Let all be forgiven me, who forgive all; let all love me, and have compassion for me, who love all; let all sorrow cease when my sorrow ceases, suffering with my suffering, and life with my life.… One three five seven nine eleven thirteen fifteen seventeen nineteen twenty-one twenty-three twenty-five twenty-seven 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 47 49 51 53 55 57. One five nine thirteen seventeen twenty-one twenty-five. Too complicated — keeps me awake. Child Roland to the dark tower came. The dead sheep lying under the birch tree, in the wood, which the dead leaves swept away in a neat circle by the last struggle. The dead horse in the cellar of the burned stable. The cat with one red eye, blood-filled. The old woman lying against the wall, staring, indifferent, breathing slowly, while blood ran slowly from the corner of her mouth. Dying in the street, strangers walking around her in a ring, and she as inattentive as a dying animal. Her pocketbook, muddy, beside her on the sidewalk. B said afterward he had heard her “scream like a siren” when the accident occurred … Dying, Egypt, dying … Crowds walking past while she dies, cars and buses honking, taxis ticking, horses clop-clopping, children running and yelling, “Susie — wait for ME!” the policeman’s whistle blowing, the church clock striking, the newsboys running with the EXTRY EXTREE and sliding with nailed boots on the asphalt, ferries hooting on the river, “she’s dying, poor Thinggggg,” “Dyinggggg.” “Susie wait for meeeee.” Suuuw-oo-or-nhoreeeeeee … Pax. Pox vobiscum. Dead. One hundred and thirty-two pounds. Five feet four and three-quarters. Torn flannel showing. The blood had run clear across the sidewalk in four separate rivulets … When the red rim of sight discovers … The void that swarms with shapes of death … and the departing batsoul hovers … Above the fountain’s falling breath … Rotten. But there is, off in the void there, an idea, a sort of ghostly fountain, tossing up and dying down again … Green light … What goes on in the brain just before and just after death? Possible that the brain may live for a time. We may go on thinking, remembering, in a confused sort of way — a jumble of sensations. Or rarefied — a tiny gnat song of consciousness … Dr. Kiernan stated that when called in at 7.13 there was still a spark of life … she looked alive but extraordinarily still. Eyes shut. Mouth wide open, fixed in the act of screaming, but silent. TERROR! … Perhaps she knew I was there, looking at her, and then walking softly, quickly, away … Strange, if that were true — but no stranger than anything else. “Yes, William, I am dead. But I know you are there. Do you want to know if an accident has occurred? Yes. A dreadful accident has occurred. I am quite all right, now. Run and wake Nanny. Shut the door into the nursery. Wind the clocks on Sunday morning. And say good-by to this house and world forever …” MISERY … My bonnie has too-bur-kulosis … My bonnie has only one lung … My bonnie has too-bur-culosis … HOK HOIK!.. My bonnie will surely die young … Be-ring ba-a-ack. Be-ring ba-a-ack. Oh, bring back my bonnie to me … I remembered how for a long time afterwards I couldn’t hear a door squeak on its hinges without hearing her scream. TERROR! I remember her face vividly. Very like mine, same forehead, same mouth. My bonnie lies over the ocean — she used to sing it to me, and what was that other one? that she said used to be sung in the Civil War …