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Chapter X 

June 20th.--Eight o'clock. The sun is shining in a clear sky. I have not been near my bed--I have not once closed my weary wakeful eyes. From the same window at which I looked out into the darkness of last night, I look out now at the bright stillness of the morning.

I count the hours that have passed since I escaped to the shelter of this room by my own sensations--and those hours seem like weeks.

How short a time, and yet how long to ME--since I sank down in the darkness, here, on the floor--drenched to the skin, cramped in every limb, cold to the bones, a useless, helpless, panic-stricken creature.







Oh, the rain, the rain--the cruel rain that chilled me last night!

Nine o'clock. Was it nine struck, or eight? Nine, surely? I am shivering again--shivering, from head to foot, in the summer air. Have I been sitting here asleep? I don't know what I have been doing.

Oh, my God! am I going to be ill?

Ill, at such a time as this!

My head--I am sadly afraid of my head. I can write, but the lines all run together. I see the words. Laura--I can write Laura, and see I write it. Eight or nine--which was it?

So cold, so cold--oh, that rain last night!--and the strokes of the clock, the strokes I can't count, keep striking in my head----



On the next page of the Diary, another entry appears. It is in a man's handwriting, large, bold, and firmly regular, and the date is "June the 21st." It contains these lines--]
