When I left the house at a late hour that morning Rossetti was not yet stirring, and so some months passed before I saw him again. If I had tried to formulate the idea--or say sensation--that possessed me at the moment, I think I should have said, in a word or two, that outside the air breathed freely. Within, the gloom, the mediaeval furniture, the brass censers, sacramental cups, lamps; and crucifixes conspired, I thought, to make the atmosphere heavy and unwholesome. As for the man himself who was the central spirit amidst these anachronistic environments, he had, if possible, attached me yet closer to himself by contact. Before this I had been attracted to him in admiration of his gifts: but now I was drawn to him, in something very like pity, for his isolation and suffering. Not that at this time he consciously made demand of much compassion, and least of all from me. Health was apparently whole with him, his spirits were good, and his energies were at their best. He had not yet known the full bitterness of the shadowed valley: not yet learned what it was to hunger for any cheerful society that would relieve him of the burden of the flesh. All that came later. Rossetti was one of the most magnetic of men, but it was not more his genius than his unhappiness that held certain of his friends by a spell. CHAPTER VIII. It was characteristic of Rossetti that he addressed me in the following terms probably before I had left his house: for the letter was, no doubt, written in that interval of sleeplessness which he had spoken of as his nightly visitant: I forgot to say--Don’t, please, spread details as to story of _Rose Mary_. I don’t want it to be stale or to get forestalled in the travelling of report from mouth to mouth. I hope it won’t be too long before you visit town again,--I will not for an instant question that you would then visit me also. Six months or more intervened, however, before I was able to visit Rossetti again. In the meantime we corresponded as fully as before: the subject upon which we most frequently exchanged opinions being now the sonnet.