And for Mr. Kenyon, I only know that I have grown the most ungrateful of human beings lately, and find myself almost glad when he does not come, certainly uncomfortable when he does—­yes, really I would rather not see him at all, and when you are not here.  The sense of which and the sorrow for which, turn me to a hypocrite, and make me ask why he does not come &c. ... questions which never came to my lips before ... till I am more and more ashamed and sorry.  Will it end, I wonder, by my ceasing to care for any one in the world, except, except...? or is it not rather that I feel trodden down by either his too great penetration or too great unconsciousness, both being overwhelming things from him to me.  From a similar cause I hate writing letters to any of my old friends—­I feel as if it were the merest swindling to attempt to give the least account of myself to anybody, and when their letters come and I know that nothing very fatal has happened to them, scarcely I can read to an end afterwards through the besetting care of having to answer it all.  Then I am ignoble enough to revenge myself on people for their stupidities ... which never in my life I did before nor felt the temptation to do ... and when they have a distaste for your poetry through want of understanding, I have a distaste for them ... cannot help it—­and you need not say it is wrong, because I know the whole iniquity of it, persisting nevertheless.  As for dear Mr. Kenyon—­with whom we began, and who thinks of you as appreciatingly and admiringly as one man can think of another,—­do not imagine that, if he should see anything, he can ‘approve’ of either your wisdom or my generosity, ... he, with his large organs of caution, and his habit of looking right and left, and round the corner a little way.  Because, you know, ... if I should be ill before ... why there, is a conclusion!—­but if afterward ... what?  You who talk wildly of my generosity, whereas I only and most impotently tried to be generous, must see how both suppositions have their possibility.  Nevertheless you are the master to run the latter risk.  You have overcome ... to your loss perhaps—­unless the judgment is revised.  As to taking the half of my prison ...  I could not even smile at that if it seemed probable ...  I should recoil from your affection even under a shape so fatal to you ... dearest!  No!  There is a better probability before us I hope and believe—­in spite of the possibility which it is impossible to deny.  And now we leave this subject for the present.

Sunday.—­You are ‘singularly well.’  You are very seldom quite well, I am afraid—­yet ‘Luria’ seems to have done no harm this time, as you are singularly well the day after so much writing.  Yet do not hurry that last act....  I won’t have it for a long while yet.