So after this little

exchange of civilities the door slammed, never to open again. I heard

the crash it made, and, with it, the falling from the walls of my

heart of many little bits of china with their own peculiar value—rare

china, some of it, that only needed dusting. The same walls, too,

carried mirrors in which I used sometimes to see reflected the misty

lawns of childhood, the daisy chains, the wind-torn blossoms scattered

through the orchard by warm rains, the robbers’


cave in the long walk, and the hidden store of apples in the

hayloft. She was my inseparable companion then—but, when the door

slammed, the mirrors cracked across their entire length, and the

visions they held vanished for ever. Now I am quite alone. At forty one

cannot begin all over again to build up careful friendships, and all

others are comparatively worthless.

Oct. 14.—My bedroom is 10 by 10. It is below the level of the

front room, and a step leads down into it. Both rooms are very quiet

on calm nights, for there is no traffic down this forsaken alley-way.

In spite of the occasional larks of the wind, it is a most sheltered

strip. At its upper end, below my windows, all the cats of the

neighbourhood congregate as soon as darkness gathers. They lie

undisturbed on the long ledge of a blind window of the opposite

building, for after the postman has come and gone at 9.30, no

footsteps ever dare to interrupt their sinister conclave, no step but

my own, or sometimes the unsteady footfall of the son who “is somethink

on a homnibus”.

Oct. 15.—I dined at an “A.B.C.” shop on poached eggs and coffee,

and then went for a stroll round the outer edge of Regent’s Park. It

was ten o’clock when I got home.1 counted no less than thirteen cats,

all of a dark colour, crouching under the lee side of the alley walls.

It was a cold night, and the stars shone like points of ice in a

blue-black sky. The cats turned their heads and stared at me in

silence as I passed. An odd sensation of shyness took possession of me

under the glare of so many pairs of unblinking eyes. As I fumbled with

the latch-key they jumped noise-lessly down and pressed against my

legs, as if anxious to be let in. But I slammed the door in their

faces and ran quickly upstairs. The front room, as I entered to grope

for the matches, felt as cold as a stone vault, and the air held an

unusual dampness.

Oct. 17.—For several days I have been working on a ponderous

article that allows no play for the fancy. My imagination requires a

judicious rein; I am afraid to let it loose, for it carries me

sometimes into appalling places beyond the stars and beneath the world.

No one realises the danger more than I do. But what a foolish thins to

write here—for there is no one to know, no one to realize! My mind of

late has held unusual thoughts, thoughts I have never had before,

about medicines and drugs and the treatment of strange illnesses. I

cannot imagine their source.

At no time in my life have I dwelt upon such ideas now constantly

throng my brain. I have had no exercise lately, for the weather has

been shocking; and all my afternoons have been spent in the

reading-room of the British Museum, where I have a reader’s ticket.