The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

The Gates Ajar. 23
nace fire. The right to mourn makes everything different. Then, as to mother, I was very
young when she died, and father, though I
loved him, was never to me what Roy has
been.
This luxury of grief, like all luxuries, is
pleasurable. Though, as I was saying, it is
only the shallow part of one's heart-I imagine that the deepest hearts have their shallows - which can be filled by it, still it brings
a shallow relief
Let it be confessed to this honest book, that,
driven to it by desperation, I found in it a
wretched sort of content.
Being a little stronger now physically, I
shall try to be a little braver; it will do no
harm to try. So I seem to see that it was
the content of poison, - salt-water poured
between shipwrecked lips.
At any rate, I mean to put the book away
and lock it up. Roy used to say that he did
not believe in journals. I begin to see why.