I reflected. Of course it ought to appear tolerable, I argued inwardly; but somehow, by some strange fatality, it would not. To live here, in this close room, the watcher of suffering⁠—sometimes, perhaps, the butt of temper⁠—through all that was to come of my youth; while all that was gone had passed, to say the least, not blissfully! My heart sunk one moment, then it revived; for though I forced myself to realize evils, I think I was too prosaic to idealise , and consequently to exaggerate them.

“My doubt is whether I should have strength for the undertaking,” I observed.

“That is my own scruple,” said she; “for you look a worn-out creature.”

So I did. I saw myself in the glass, in my mourning-dress, a faded, hollow-eyed vision. Yet I thought little of the wan spectacle. The blight, I believed, was chiefly external: I still felt life at life’s sources.