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dressed—Helen conspicuous amongst them, as we were, in her gown of grey. I went down when they arrived, but didn’t stay long: the crowd of voices and faces, after the chill and stillness of Millbank and of my own room, seemed awful to me. But Helen stepped aside with me, and we spoke a little about my visit. I told her about the monotonous corridors, and how nervous I had grown being led through them. I asked her if she remembered Mr Le Fanu’s novel, about the heiress who is made to seem mad? I said, ‘I did think for a while: Suppose Mother is in league with Mr Shillitoe, and he means to keep me on the wards, bewildered?’ She smiled at that—but checked to see that Mother could not hear me. Then I told her a little about the women on the wards. She said she thought they must be frightening. I said they were not frightening at all, but only weak—‘So Mr Shillitoe told me. He said I am to mould them. That is my task. They are to take a moral pattern from me.’
    She studied her hands as I spoke, turning the rings upon her fingers. She said I was brave. She said she is sure this work will distract me, from ‘all my old griefs’.
    Then Mother called, why were we so serious and so quiet? She listened shuddering when I described the wards to her this afternoon, and said that I am not to tell the details of the gaol when we have guests. Now she said, ‘You mustn’t let Margaret tell you prison stories, Helen. And here is your husband waiting, look. You will be late for the play.’ Helen went straight to Stephen’s side, and he took her hand and kissed it. I sat and watched them; then slipped away and came up here. I thought, If I may not talk of my visit, then I can certainly sit and write about it, in my own book . . .
    Now I have filled twenty pages; and when I read what I have written I see that, after all, my path through Millbank was not so crooked as I thought. It is neater, anyway, than my own twisting thoughts!—which was all I filled my last book with. This, at least, shall never be like that one.
    It is half-past twelve. I can hear the maids upon the attic stairs, Cook slamming bolts—that sound will never be the same to me, I think, after to-day!
    There is Boyd, closing her door, walking to draw her curtain: I may follow her movements as if my ceiling were of glass. Now she is unlacing her boots, letting them fall with a thud. Now comes the creak of her mattress.
    There is the Thames, as black as molasses. There are the lights of Albert Bridge, the trees of Battersea, the starless sky . . .
    Mother came, half an hour ago, to bring me my dose. I told her I should like to sit a little longer, that I wished she would leave the bottle with me so I might take it later—but no, she wouldn’t do that. I am ‘not quite well enough’, she said. Not ‘for that’. Not yet.
    And so I sat and let her pour the grains into the glass, and swallowed the mixture as she watched and nodded. Now I am too tired to write—but too restless, I think, to sleep just yet.
    For Miss Ridley was right to-day. When I close my eyes I see only the chill white corridors of Millbank, the mouths of the cells. I wonder how the women lie there? I think of them now—Susan Pilling, and Sykes, and Miss Haxby in her quiet tower; and the girl with the violet, whose face was so fine.
    I wonder what her name is?

2 September 1872
    Selina Dawes
Selina Ann Dawes
Miss S. A. Dawes
     
    Miss S. A. Dawes, Trance Medium
     
    Miss Selina Dawes, Celebrated Trance Medium,
Gives Séances Daily
     
     
    Miss Dawes, Trance Medium,
Gives Dark Séances Daily - Vincy’s Spiritual Hotel,
Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC.
Private & Pleasantly Situated.
     
    DEATH IS DUMB, WHEN LIFE IS DEAF
     
    & it says that, for an extra shilling, they will make it very bold & give it a border of black.

30 September 1874
    Mother’s injunction against my prison stories did not, after all, last long this week, for every visitor we have had has wanted to hear my