There Was
No Meat In The House, So I Supped Frugally Off Two Boiled Eggs, A
Stodgy Household Loaf, And A Mug Of Ale, After Which I Climbed The
Stairs, And Retired To My Feather-Bed In A Rather Depressed Frame Of
Mind.
Visions of Salemina and Francesca driving under the linden-trees in
Berlin flitted across my troubled reveries, with glimpses of Willie
Beresford and his mother at Aix-les-Bains.
At this distance, and in
the dead of night, my sacrifice in coming here seemed fruitless.
Why did I not allow myself to drift for ever on that pleasant sea
which has been lapping me in sweet and indolent content these many
weeks? Of what use to labour, to struggle, to deny myself, for an
art to which I can never be more than the humblest handmaiden? I
felt like crying out, as did once a braver woman's soul than mine,
'Let me be weak! I have been seeming to be strong so many years!'
The woman and the artist in me have always struggled for the
mastery. So far the artist has triumphed, and now all at once the
woman is uppermost. I should think the two ought to be able to live
peaceably in the same tenement; they do manage it in some cases; but
it seems a law of my being that I shall either be all one or all the
other.
The question for me to ask myself now is, "Am I in love with loving
and with being loved, or am I in love with Willie Beresford?" How
many women have confounded the two, I wonder?
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