The voices of people about me do hurt me so. I won't see a soul I know, but the waiters asking for orders--O they hurt me so! I shall be like a woman, and scream. I can't see my father yet--not yet. I couldn't bear his face, or his voice. They would be so kind. I must be alone. Yet it is awful for crazy people to be alone. They are so beset by dreams--and faces. I don't think they are real, but still there are faces. ... My God! what have I seen to-day! I went walking--fast, fast--and I took the poorest streets, so that I might not meet any one I know. And all the animal-people--hog, rabbit, fox, cat, and the rest--kept coming toward me as I walked; for now there seems to be a sort of mist in the air, and one face flares out of the mist and then another. And it rushed over me suddenly how they must ache and suffer and languish to be so poor and so ignorant and vile. There is a dropping inside my heart, all the time, as if the blood that ought to nourish me were falling and falling and wasting itself in pain. And I began to look into the faces, and it seemed to me as if these people, too, were all of them bleeding. The ground was red and soaked. And then I learned that all this great world is in pain just like my own. I did not seem so much alone then--not quite. They were like me, all of them. I began to see how some might love them; and the more hideous they were, so much the more could one love. _Who was Jesus Christ?_ ... I went to the Passion Music, and sat alone in a little crowded corner, afraid of being seen. It crucified my soul. I felt as if the violins were bowing on my brain, sawing the little gray strings that are my nerves. And then it came upon me like an overwhelming sea. This Man--this God-man--loved the whole world and was rejected by it. I loved one; and because she cast me off, I am as I am. True or not--His story--but _is_ it true? ... Yet I cannot stop loving her. I love her to-day more, more, a thousand times more, if that can be. Is it true I have no right to love her? Then I have no right to breathe. I had no right to be born. [Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_] Dear Francis,--Won't you come down for a day or two? If not, I think I shall go to you. Write me a word. [Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Ernest Hume_] Dear father,--Try to be patient with me. I'll come soon, truly soon. I'm not very good company. I'm thinking things out. [Sidenote: _Telegram to Francis Hume_] CONCORD, N. H. Ernest Hume sick here with pneumonia. Come. [Sidenote: _Mrs. Montrose to Zoe Morton_]