November 22.--At last something has happened, nothing indeed to my hurt, but it has broken the strain a little. The last days have been windless, warm, and, till yesterday afternoon, cloudless. Suddenly, as I sat in the Piazza, the daylight seemed to be put out by a great blackness which came up rapidly out of the north, and hung over half the sky. A wind swept suddenly in from the lagoon, and blew sharply across the open space and along the arcades. In hardly more than a moment the Piazza was empty. I went down to the Riva, and called to my gondolier, who swung to and fro in his moored boat. The water was blackening, and had begun to race past. He called to me that we must wait, and I saw one or two gondolas hurrying up the Grand Canal, carried along by the tide, the men rowing hard. As the rain began I went into the Grand Hotel, and sat looking out on the water, which blackened and whitened and flung itself forward in actual waves, and splashed right up the steps and over the balcony. The rain came down steadily, and the lightning flickered across the sky behind the Salute, and lit up the domes, the windows, the steps, and a few people huddled there. Every now and then the water turned white; I saw every outline as it shouldered forward like a sea and broke on the marble steps; and the water was empty, not a gondola, not even a steamer; and then a steamer which had turned home drifted past without a passenger. I went out, and felt the rain on my face, and the water splashing on the steps; not far off I could see the gondolas tossing on their moorings. I seemed to be on the shore of some horrible island, and I had to cross the sea, which there was no crossing. I was afraid the gondola would come for me; but nothing, I thought, should tempt me upon that tossing water: I saw the black hull whirled sideways, and the man reeling over on his oar. No gondola came, and I slept that night in the Grand Hotel, which seemed to me, as I heard the water splashing under my windows, impregnably safe. * * * * * November 27.--She is here, she has become kind to me now, only kind and gentle; I am no longer afraid of her love. I have been ill again, and she has taken care of me, she has taken me away from this horrible Giudecca. I look out on a great garden, in which I can forget there is any water in Venice; I am near the land and I see nothing but trees. The house is full of pictures, beautiful old Venetian things; it is like living in another century, yet in the midst of a comfort which rests me. I am no longer afraid of her love; I seem to have become a child, and her love is maternal. When I look at her I can see her face as it was, as it is, without a scar; I see that she is beautiful. If I get well again I will never leave her. * * * * *