My voice is certainly not what it was, and not through any want of practise, I'm sure. People so hopelessly worried as I am at present can't sing really well. For the second time yesterday I wrote that I shall really go to mother after the fourth of next month, and I mean it, I do mean it! I owe something to her, too, and to myself, and I still don't see what harm it can do to Harry. Poor dear, he is awfully frightened! "If you persist in this wild notion, you will compel me to take a step which will be bitter to you and to myself." I don't know what step he can mean. That's only talk. I'll do it just to see what happens, for one oughtn't to threaten a woman with penalties which she can't conceive, or her curiosity will lead her to do the very thing. It was an ill-understood threat that made Eve eat the apple, my Hal. "Thou shalt surely die"; but, not knowing what "to die" was like, she thought to herself: "Well, just to see." There's no particularly "bitter step" that he can take, and the time is really come for me to assert myself a little now. Men love a woman better when she is not all milk and honey. . . . It is near now, Vi! He has her chin, her hands, her dark grave eyes, her very smile. I am on the point at last of seeing him in her arms. How will she look? What will she think of me, the little girl whom she used to guide with her eye, beating her a hundred miles, an old experienced mummie while she is still a maid! I can no more resist it than I could fly! I shall do it! I am going to do it! I told Harry that I should. There's no danger, and I can't resist it any longer. I am just back from P. He is looking too sweet now for anything, and can blow the whistle of the rattle. I told Mrs. C. that in three days' time I shall be taking him from her for at least ten days, perhaps for good. Only three days! Sarah is beginning to get things ready.... Yes, it was "a bitter step" enough, poor Hal! God help you and me, and all the helpless!... I told poor Sarah just now: "I am not married. You only think that I am; but I am not. I have a child; but I am not married. Sarah, this is no fit place for a girl like you." She thinks that I am mad, I know, but I keep quite sane and myself. I am only sorry for poor old Hal. He loves me and I loved him when I had a heart....