At Hapton it was just the reverse; neither Musgrave nor the curate, Templeton, troubled their head about my fancies.  I don’t imagine that Musgrave noticed that anything was the matter with me.  If I was silent, he merely thought I had nothing to say; he took for granted I was in my normal state, and the result was that I temporarily recovered it.

Then, too, the kind of talk I got was a relief.  With women, the real talk is intime talk; the world of politics, books, men, facts, incidents, is merely a setting; and when they talk about them, it is merely to pass the time, as a man turns to a game.  At Hapton, Musgrave chatted away about his neighbours, his boys’ club, his new organ, his bishop, his work.  I used to think him rather a proser; how I blessed his prosing now!  I took long walks with him; he asked a few perfunctory questions about my books, but otherwise he was quite content to prattle on, like a little brook, about all that was in his mind, and he was more than content if I asked an occasional question or assented courteously.  Then we had some good talks about the rural problems of education—­he is a sensible and intelligent man enough—­and some excellent arguments about the movement of religion, where I found him unexpectedly liberal-minded.  He left me to do very much what I liked.  I read in the mornings and before dinner; and after dinner we smoked or even played a game of dummy whist.  It is a pretty part of the country, and when he was occupied in the afternoon, I walked about by myself.  From first to last not a single word fell from Musgrave to indicate that he thought me in any way different, or suspected that I was not perfectly content, with the blessed result that I immediately became exactly what he thought me.

I got on no better with my writing; my brain is as bare as a winter wood; but I found that I did not rebel against that.  Of course it does not reveal a very dignified temperament, that one should so take colour from one’s surroundings.  If I can be equable and good-humoured here, I ought to be able to be equable and good-humoured at home; at the same time I am conscious of an intense longing to see Maud and the children.  Probably I should do better to absent myself resolutely from home at stated intervals; and I think it argued a fine degree of perception in Maud, that she decided not to accompany me, though she was pressed to come.  I am going home to-morrow, delighted at the thought, grateful to the good Musgrave, in a more normal frame of mind than I have been for months.

February 28, 1889.

One of the most depressing things about my present condition is that I feel, not only so useless, but so prickly, so ugly, so unlovable.  Even Maud’s affection, stronger and more tender than ever, does not help me, because I feel that she cannot love me for what I am, but for what she remembers me as being, and hopes that I may be again.  I know it is not so, and that she would love me whatever I did or became; but I cannot realise that now.