They come as flowers, or as scents; sometimes they come only as a subtle alteration to the details of my room—I return to it and find an ornament taken up and set down crooked, the door to my closet ajar and my dresses with marks of fingers on the velvet and the silk, a cushion with a dent in it, as if a head has lain there. They never come when I am here and watching. I wish they would. They would not frighten me. I should be frightened, now, if they ceased! For while they come, I know they come to make the space between us thick. They make a quivering cord of dark matter, it stretches from Millbank to Cheyne Walk, it is the cord through which she will send me herself.The cord grows thickest at night, as I lie sleeping with the laudanum on me. Why didn’t I guess that? I take the medicine gladly, now. And sometimes, when Mother is out—for the rope must be made in the day-time, too—sometimes I go to her drawer and steal an extra draught of it.I shall no longer need my medicine, of course, when I am in Italy.Mother is patient with me now.
