All this month I’ve held my breath like a coward, and turned my head, afraid to look joy in the face. It has come near so often before; and each time the pain has snatched me back and bound me hand and foot. So I said I would never inflict on myself the agony of disappointment again. But I just can’t live up to that foolishness, and I’m so glad I can’t. If this isn’t the ending, but just a blossoming oasis in a desert way, shall I miss the joy of that? It’s nearer the end than the last one was, anyway, and better and brighter and bigger. If it isn’t fulfillment, it is prophecy, and that’s the next best thing. Some day it will come—the Head said so. I am to be part of life again—I! I! Some day I shall go in and out again among my kind, with power enough of living in me to make hours atone for days, and months for years. Nothing shall pass me that is mine! It is human life I want, not birds and trees and flowers: they’re beautiful, but they aren’t enough—I can afford to let myself say it now, because the other is so near, so near! I used to be part of life here, long, long after I was sick: there was nothing I couldn’t help about, nobody who didn’t smile at me as I passed: in every face I saw a memory of kindness given and received. And I’m going back to it, to my real life.—Ah, soon or late, what matter? _I’m going back!_ Though a thousand downfalls be in the way, I’ll make it yet: and be this fulfilment, or only prophecy, I open my heart to joy! VIII BLACKBIRD DIPLOMACY _May 9th._ Something is dreadfully wrong with Caro, and for once she does not give me her confidence. She went to Milly’s night before last quite her own bright self, and came back to lunch yesterday another creature. A shower came up just after lunch, so I lay on my porch sofa until it passed, with David and Caro for company. I imagine things had gone wrong at the table. I saw, by Caro’s bright color and the high way she carried her pretty head when she came home, that trouble was brewing for somebody, and she probably found David’s sunny and unsuspicious good humor the negative complement of her own surcharged spirit. There had been at least a minor explosion; for when they came out to me they were both making an effort to appear quite like themselves. But Caro’s eyes were danger-signals; and, though David smiled and his voice had its usual deep evenness, his eyes kept a furtive and brooding watch on hers. She seemed in the gayest of spirits, yet there was some jangle in the mirth which had always rung sweet and true before. The thunder was rattling overhead, and the wind-blown curtains of the rain shut out the hills beyond. David walked to the end of the porch and studied the clouds for a little before he came back. “I was afraid this storm would spoil the drive you promised me yesterday,—” he began. Caro’s eyes sparkled.