Below , in the garden , it was quite dark , and I could only see dimly the dead leaves that were whirling and dancing uncannily over the roseless paths . The poor dead leaves -- yet not quite dead ! There was still enough unquiet life left in them to make them restless and forlorn . They hearkened yet to every call of the wind , who cared for them no longer but only played freakishly with them and broke their rest . I felt sorry for the leaves as I watched them in that dull , weird twilight , and angry -- in a petulant fashion that almost made me laugh -- with the wind that would not leave them in peace . Why should they -- and I -- be vexed with these transient breaths of desire for a life that had passed us by ? I was in the grip of a bitter loneliness that evening -- so bitter and so insistent that I felt I could not face the future at all , even with such poor fragments of courage as I had gathered about me after Father 's death , hoping that they would , at least , suffice for my endurance , if not for my content . But now they fell away from me at sight of the emptiness of life . The emptiness ! Ah , it was from that I shrank . I could have faced pain and anxiety and heartbreak undauntedly , but I could not face that terrible , yawning , barren emptiness . I put my hands over my eyes to shut it out , but it pressed in upon my consciousness insistently , and would not be ignored longer . The moment when a woman realizes that she has nothing to live for -- neither love nor purpose nor duty -- holds for her the bitterness of death . She is a brave woman indeed who can look upon such a prospect unquailingly , and I was not brave . I was weak and timid . Had not Father often laughed mockingly at me because of it ? It was three weeks since Father had died -- my proud , handsome , unrelenting old father , whom I had loved so intensely and who had never loved me . I had always accepted this fact unresentfully and unquestioningly , but it had steeped my whole life in its tincture of bitterness . Father had never forgiven me for two things . I had cost my mother 's life and I was not a son to perpetuate the old name and carry on the family feud with the Frasers .
I was a very lonely child , XXXXX no playmates or companions of any sort , and my girlhood was lonelier still .
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