All this helps me--I am ashamed to say how much--though sometimes the thought of all the necessary arrangements weighs on me like a leaden weight, on days when I fall back into a sad, idle, hopeless repining. Sometimes it seems as if the old happy life was all broken up and gone for ever; and, so strange a thing is memory and imagination, that even the months overshadowed by the loss of my faculty of work seem to me now impossibly fragrant and beautiful, my sufferings unreal and unsubstantial. Real trouble, real grief, have at least the bracing force of actuality, and sweep aside with a strong hand all artificial self-made miseries and glooms. December 15, 1889. I have kept no record of these weeks. They have been full of business, sadness, and yet of hope. We went back home for a time; we made our farewells, and it moved me strangely to see that our departure was viewed almost with consternation. It is Maud's loss that will be felt. I have lived very selfishly and dully myself, but even so I was half-glad to find that even I should be missed. At such a time everything is forgotten and forgiven, and such grudging, peaceful neighbourliness as even I have shown seems appreciated and valued. It was a heartrending business reviving our sorrow, and it plunged me for a time into my old dry bitterness of spirit. But I hardened my heart as best I could, and felt more deeply than ever, how far beyond my powers of endurance it would have been to have taken up the old life, and Alec not there. Again and again it was like a knife plunged into my heart with an almost physical pain. Not so with Maud and Maggie--it was to them a treasure of precious memories, and they could dare to indulge their grief. I can't write of it, I can't think of it. Wherever I turned, I saw him in a hundred guises--as a tiny child, as a small, sturdy boy, as the son we lost. We have let the house to some very kind and reasonable people, who have made things very easy to us; and to me at least it was a sort of heavy joy to take the last meal in the old home, to drive away, to see the landscape fade from sight. I shall never willingly return. It would seem to me like a wilful rolling among the thorns of life, a gathering-in of spears into one's breast. I seemed like a naked creature that had lost its skin, that shrank and bled at every touch. February 10, 1890.