MS-HRC-SB-4-3

[0659] gettable cohorts and sweeps away the blue for ever. [0660] My situation
is truly delicate. [0661] What fine things, what momentous things, I am
going to miss through fear, fear of falling back into the old error,
fear of not finishing in time, fear of revelling, for the last
time, in a last outpouring of misery, impotence and hate. [0662] The forms
are many in which the unchanging seeks relief from its formlessness.

[0663] Ah yes, I was always subject to the deep thought, especially in
the spring of the year. [0664] That one had been nagging at me for the
past five minutes. [0665] I venture to hope there will be no more, of
that depth. [0666] After all it is not important not to finish, [0667] there are
worse things than velleities. [0668] But is that the point? [0669] Quite likely.
[0670] All I ask is that the last of mine, as long as it lasts, should
have living for its theme, [0671] that is all, [0672] I know what I mean.

[0673] If it
begins to run short of life I shall feel it. [0674] All I ask is to know,
before I abandon him whose life has so well begun, that my death
and mine alone prevents him from living on, from winning, losing,
joying, suffering, rotting and dying, and that even had I lived
he would have waited, before he died, for his body to be dead.
[0675] That is what you might call taking a reef in your sails.

[0676] My body does not yet make up its mind. [0677] But I fancy it weighs
heavier on the bed, flattens and spreads. [0678] My breath, when it comes
back, fills the room with its din, though my chest moves no more
than a sleeping child's. [0679] I open my eyes and gaze unblinkingly and
long at the night sky. So a tiny tot I gaped, first at the novelt-
ies, then at the antiquities. [0680] Between it and me the pane, fogged ^misted
and smeared with the filth of years. [0681] I should like to breathe