hospital each morning for news, and sometimes an hour or so in the evenings, he having a good deal of business to do in one shape or another.
On about the thirteenth day (but all accurate record or memory is gone) I lit upon the Louvre, and from that hour forward was in it continually. It gave me much quiet pleasure.
This was broken into by the news of the nineteenth morning. Secondary fever had set in. For the first time, Starkie seemed to give up hope. The effect on me was quite different. I could not realise the fact of Mr. Brooke being in the state I, I almost thought, knew he was in. I went into the Parc Monceau, and sat there in a sort of warm, gold dream of wilderment for some time, till, all at once, I caught myself starting up with the exclamation:
'No, no! If I was right, then, in refusing, I am right in now having refused.'—And I was right. For what had I to do with it?'
I spent the afternoon sculling on the river out at Courbevoi.
After dinner I went for a walk along the boulevards, softly singing or whistling to myself; till, in a dim street by the Opera, I woke up out of vague, sweet thoughts into the perception of something like a breath of fluttering music in me, now melting, now languorous, now fierce, floating up into my brain and pulsing through me, from time to time, with a longing and yearning to stretch out my arms in a happy cry to something. And in this strange, half-ecstatic state I came home; threw off my things, and got into bed as into a white cool haven.
In that night I had a strange and vivid dream. I stood below somewhere, and saw a lady I had known once, in a carriage with a dead child, on a green-lit down by the sea. The carriage had just crossed a bridge. A river rolled down smoothly over golden sands. A boy on the right shore stood watching a ball that the up-cresting sea-waves kept lifting up to and back from him every moment. I rose, and crossed over the stone bridge; came behind the carriage and began climbing over it from the back. The lady turned, and,
