"It is bad enough to be a fool and not to know it; but to be a fool and feel with every fibre of your being, every shred of your understanding, that you are one, and that there is no help for it; that all your philosophy won't aid you; that you are one great want, stilled a little by a letter, only to be haunted afresh by the personality of another creature, tortured with doubts and hurt by your loss of self-respect,--ah! it was a long winter! Then the New Year came and went, and time dragged slowly but surely, and at length the Almanacs said it was spring-time, and the girls at the street corners called, 'Vilets, sweet vilets!' and the milliners marked down guinea bonnets to 12_s._ 11_d._, and I watched each token of its coming with a fearsome, joyous expectation--Go on? Ah, yes, I'll go on,--where was I? Oh, spring was coming, wasn't it? I do not laugh as I used to, eh? How used I to laugh? I forget. Well, I won't laugh if it hurts you, dear, not even at myself. "Well, once again, I was standing at a table in a hotel room, waiting. It is the simple things that are so hard to describe, and that are most complicated in their effects. I said again, 'Come in!' held fast to the table with my left hand and smiled,--to be accurate, began a smile. Spring is later up there; perhaps some of the winter's frost was still in the atmosphere, for something froze it on my lips. I felt a curious stiffening in my face, and the touch of his hand did not thaw me. Feel happy? No; I was numb in one way, and yet keenly alive to impressions. I felt as if my nerve net was outside my skin, not under it, and that the exposure to the air and surrounding influences made it intensely, acutely sensitive. I seemed to see with my sense of feeling as well as my sight. You know how in great cold you seem to burn your hand with an icy heat if you suddenly grasp a piece of iron? Well, I felt some way I was touched by glowing shivers: that sounds nonsense, but it expresses the feeling. Why? I don't know why: I was analyzing, being analyzed; criticising, being criticised. It was all so different, you see. Supposing you had just sipped a beaker of exhilarating, life-giving, rich wine with an exquisite bouquet, and a glow that steals through you and witches and warms you; and suddenly, without your knowing how it happens, the draught is transformed into luke-warm water, or 'Polly' without the 'dash' in it! What did he say? Let me think. Oh, yes: I was wretchedly thin. Odd how things strike one. I once saw a representation of Holberg's Stundeslöse in Copenhagen. One of the characters is an ancient housekeeper, with a long money-bag, who is, as they term it, 'marriage-sick.' A match is arranged between her and a young spark in the village. The scene is this: while the monetary part of the affair is being arranged by the notary, etc., he says to her,--'Permit me to pass my hand over your bosom, mistress?' She simpers; and I shall