At times my Broken Heart feels far off while I’m feeling it hideous and wan inside my breast. Myself is Me, and much of Me had nothing to do with my Heart when it Broke: though I loved with all of Me. I loved with all of Me one who lives in New York--and I lost and lost, all the way. There was mere human ordinariness about which I built up a strangely sincere temple-of-grace which I looked to see shed light on my life like the new eternal beauty of a Day-break. I gave the best I knew to it, from the distance, and I lost. The day was a little day and broke at last only like my Heart. All was broken without so much as clasp-of-hands. I am realest, strongest, passionately-sincerest in my essential known falseness-- It was all foolish and petty and someway false but I felt foolishly and shudderingly that I could live no more. But I am singularly brave from life-long custom. I have no pleas and surrenderings in me. I shudder but live on. One Thursday I felt suddenly oppressed and beset and something in my throat cried out to the absent God to help me and guard me. It was something in my throat which shrieked it dumbly in the deafening silence in my room. It was not I myself: for I am unsuppliant toward everyone human and divine though there often come such Thursdays. Harder than Thursdays are Fridays and some other days when comes a familiar sharp twist beneath my chest-bones without the cognizance of my remembering thoughts: and when though I strive against it my Broken Heart makes me sit longish half-hours with my head on my hands. _A dark bright fierce fire_ To-morrow I am Lonely. I am so Lonely that I can feel myself rattle inside my life like one live seed in a hollow gourd. I am on fire with Loneliness. I am living this month alone in this house. The solitude is pregnant: Doors and Door-knobs and Curtains and Tables have silently come alive in it and have taken on identities like those of tamed wild beasts. I do housework--I dust window-sills and water flowers. I gather up newspapers and brush the floors with a dust-mop. I wash my dishes. I cook my breakfasts. I look out of windows. I linger at screen-doors. I answer the telephone: I say, ‘They’re not at home.’ I change my frock and put on a hat and a cloak and gloves and go softly out the door and front gate on an errand. I meet people on the street whom I know, whom I may speak to, whom I may avoid: who may speak to me: who may avoid me: for I am at best well hated in this Butte. I come back again, softly unlock the door and come in. I come upstairs, take off the out-door things, give a hasty side-glance in my glass and go downstairs. I read awhile. To-day I read an old-fashioned short story whose soft wondrous prose cadences fed my senses--the Parable of the Prodigal Son.--for this my son was dead and is alive--was lost and is found--. But I am very restless and cannot read long.