“Thyrsis, as I write to you now I seeclearly how perfectly preposterous and unreal all this is; and again there comes to me the impulse to tear up this letter, and banish the troop of hob-goblins from my mind. But no, this time I am determined to make a clean breast of the thing—for I see that secrecy and solitude are what it feeds on. If I were happy and busy with you such ideas would have no power over me. But think how it is, with my loneliness and despair! I don’t want to say anything to make your task harder—but oh, Thyrsis, it is frightful to have nothing to do but wait, and wait, and wait! The baby wakes me up in the night and I lie for hours—it is at such times that these phantoms take hold of me. Do you realize that I literally never know what it is to have more than three or four
