How I must have sunk in the years which followed those dear old days,
ever even to have found divertisement among the people like Maurice and
the fluffies. Surely even a one-eyed and one-legged man ought to be able
to do something for his country politically, it suddenly seemed to
me--and what a glorious picture to gaze at!--If I could some day go into
Parliament, and have Alathea beside me, to give me inspiration and help
me to the best in myself. How her poise would tell in English political
society! How her brain and her power of exercising her critical
faculties! Apart from the fact that I love every inch of her wisp of a
body--What an asset that mind would be to any man!--And I dreamed and
dreamed in the firelight--things all filled with sentiment and
exaltation, which of course no fellow could ever say aloud, or let
anyone know of--A journal is certainly an immense comfort, and I do not
believe I could have gone through this hideous year of my life without
it.
How I would love to have Alathea for my wife--and have children--It
can't be possible that I have written that! I loathe children in the
abstract--they bore me to death--Even Solonge de Clerté's two
entertaining angels--but to have a son--with Alathea's eyes----God! how
the thought makes me feel!--How I would like to sit and talk with her of
how we should bring him up--I reached out my hand and picked up a volume
of Charles Lamb and read "Dream Children"--and as I finished I felt that
idiotic choky sensation which I have only begun to know since something
in me has been awakened by Alathea--or since my nerves have been on the
rack--I don't remember ever feeling much touched, or weak, or silly,
before the war--.
And now what have I to face--?
A will, stronger, or as strong as my own--A prejudice of the deepest
which I cannot explain away--A knowledge that I have no power to retain
the thing I love--No guerdon to hold out to her mentally or
physically--Nothing but the material thing of money--which because of
her great unselfishness and desire to benefit her loved ones, she might
be forced to consider. My only possibility of obtaining her at all is to
buy her with money. And when once bought,--when I had her here in my
house,--would I have the strength to resist the temptation to take
advantage of the situation?--Could I go on day after day never touching
her,--never having any joys?--until the greatness of my love somehow
melted her dislike and contempt of me--?