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STRAIT IS THE GATE 202

scarcely begun; birth of little Lise; long hours of watching beside Juliette; I take no pleasure in writing anything here that I can write to Jerome. I should like to keep myself from the intolerable fault which is common to so many women — that of writing too much. Let me consider this notebook as a means of perfection.

There followed several pages of notes made in the course of her reading, extracts, etc. Then, dated from Fongueusemare once more:

16th July. Juliette is happy; she says so, seems so; I have no right, no reason to doubt it. Whence comes this feeling of dissatisfaction, of discomfort, which I have now when I am with her? Perhaps from feeling that such happiness is so practical, so easily obtained, so perfectly "to measure” that it seems to cramp the soul and stifle it. ... And I ask myself now whether it is really happiness that I desire, so much as the progress towards happiness. Oh, Lord ! preserve me from a happiness to which I might too easily attain! Teach me to put off my happiness, to place it as far away from me as Thou art.


Several pages here had been torn out; they referred, no doubt, to our painful meeting at Le Havre. The

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