The Story of Mary MacLane/March 31
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'"
ALL DAY long this heart-sickening song of Mariana has been reeling and swimming in my brain. I awoke with it early in the morning, and it is still with me now in the lateness. I wondered at times during the day why that very gentle and devilishly persistent refrain did not drive me insane or send me into convulsions. I tried vainly to fix my mind on a book. I began reading "Mill on the Floss," but that weird poem was not to be foiled. It bewitched my brain. Now, as I write, I hear twenty voices chanting in a sad minor key—twenty voices that fill my brain with sound to the bursting point. "He cometh not—he cometh not—he cometh not." "That I were dead"—"I am aweary, aweary,—"that I were dead—that I were dead." "He cometh not—that I were dead."
It is maddening in that it is set sublimely to the music of my own life.
Now that I have written it I can hope that it may leave me. If it follows me through the night, and if I awake to another day of it the cords of my overworked mind will surely break.
But let me thank the kind Devil.
It is leaving me now!
It is as if tons were lifted from my brain.