On the second and third days I felt much better. The thaw was less
violent, the wood crackled in my stove. On the morning of Wednesday
April 14 I got up, dressed, and sat in front of my window. The ice was
still there, but over it lay a faint, a very faint, filmy sheen of
water. It was a day of gleams, the sun flashing in and out of the
clouds. Just beneath my window a tree was pushing into bud. Pools of
water lay thick on the dirty melting snow. I got the Rat to bring a
little table and put some books on it. I had near me _The Spirit of
Man_, Keats's _Letters_, _The Roads_, Beddoes, and _Pride and
Prejudice_. A consciousness of the outer world crept, like warmth,
through my bones.
"Rat," I said, "who's been to see me?"
"No one," said he.
I felt suddenly a ridiculous affront.
"No one?" I asked, incredulous.
"No one," he answered. "They've all forgotten you, Barin," he added
maliciously, knowing that that would hurt me.
It was strange how deeply I cared. Here was I who, only a short while
before, had declared myself done with the world for ever, and now I was
almost crying because no one had been to see me! Indeed, I believe in my
weakness and distress I actually did cry.
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