'The house I am staying in is nice enough, and the landlady seems a kind woman. The name I go by is Mrs. Brandon (you will not forget to direct your letters so), and I said that my husband was an officer, and had gone out to join his regiment in India. I have a comfortable bedroom on the third floor. There are two windows, and they look out on the street. The time seems as if it would never pass; the twelve hours of the day seem like twelve centuries. I have not even a book to read, and I never go out for fear of being seen. In the evening I put on a thick veil and go for a walk in the back streets. But I cannot go out before nine; it is not dark till then, and I cannot stop out later than ten on account of the men who speak to you. My coloured hair makes me look fast, and I am so afraid of meeting someone I know, that this short hour is as full of misery as those that preceded it. Every passer-by seems to know me, to recognize me, and I cannot help imagining that he or she will be telling my unfortunate story half an hour after in the pitiless drawing-rooms of Merrion Square. Oh, Alice darling, you are the only friend I have in the world. If it were not for you, I believe I should drown myself in the Liffey. No girl was ever so miserable as I. I cannot tell you how I feel, and you cannot imagine how forlorn it all is; and I am so ill. I am always hungry, and always sick, and always longing. Oh, these longings; you may think they are nothing, but they are dreadful. You remember how active I used to be, how I used to run about the tennis-court; now I can scarcely crawl. And the strange sickening fancies: I see things in the shops that tempt me, sometimes it is a dry biscuit, sometimes a basket of strawberries; but whatever it is, I stand and look at it, long for it, until weary of longing and standing with a sort of weight weighing me down, and my stays all rucking up to my neck, I crawl home. There I am all alone; and I sit in the dark, on a wretched hard chair by the window; and I cry; and I watch the summer night and all the golden stars, and I cannot say what I think of during all these long and lonely hours; I only know that I cannot find energy to go to bed. And I never sleep a whole night through; the cramp comes on so terribly that I jump up screaming. Oh, Alice, how I hate _him!_ When I think of it all I see how selfish men are; they never think of us--they only think of themselves. You would scarcely know me if you saw me now; all my complexion--you know what a pretty complexion it was--is all red and mottled. When you saw me a fortnight ago I was all right: it is extraordinary what a change has come about. I think it was the journey and the excitement; there would be no concealing the truth now. It is lucky I left Galway when I did.