Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/89

Rh clouds on which I am now gazing. I do like this last hour of the four and twenty that we snatch from sleep. It is so pleasant to feel the excitement of an amusing evening fade away, by degrees, into a mood half thoughtful, half pensive, like the rich colours in the west, melting into the saddened softness of twilight. What made me say I was bored to-night?—it is an affectation of to-day. It is worse than a sin to be pleased: it is a shame. What has poor, dear Truth done now-a-days, that every body blushes to own her? I ought to be satisfied with the last few hours, if it were only for making me enjoy the stillness; and there is nothing like the stillness of London—it is intense. The very wind has not a voice, and what a depth of purple is in the sky, broken by a few small, bright stars! It. was a beautiful belief that sought to read the future in their light. We read nothing there now. My spirit denies my words; they yet shine down upon us with influence; they give us dreams, fantasies, and associations: we feel the divinity of our better nature in their