Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/253



July the thirtieth. seven times, the days pass through the furnace. Only the nights are possible, and one lies awake much to realize the fact. Really, I find them more merciful than they often are in this terrible month. While the moon lived they were solemn and unreal, like the nights of an unknown planet in which one was a chance visitor. My brain burned, my head swam; I thought strange thoughts and felt new emotions, and was an alien to myself. Now that the moon is dead, there is a singular quality in the darkness; it creeps on compassionately, like delicate and tender feeling, shielding one from the fiery trouble of the obscured sun. I long for the dark, and when it comes I feel as if it were a cool hand, and I lay my cheek upon it, and am quieted and comforted—no, I am not comforted. I have not heard from Dana for eighteen days.

I read somewhere in a society novel, once,