The altar fire by A.C. Benson

I have been away for some days, paying a visit to an old friend, a bachelor clergyman living in the country. The only other occupant of the house, a comfortable vicarage, is his curate. I am better -- ashamed almost to think how much better -- for the change. It is partly the new place, the new surroundings, the new minds, no doubt. But it is also the change of atmosphere. At home I am surrounded by sympathy and compassion; however unobtrusive they are, I feel that they are there. I feel that trivial things, words, actions, looks are noted, commented upon, held to be significant. If I am silent, I must be depressed; if I talk and smile, I am making an effort to overcome my depression. It sounds unloving and ungracious to resent this: but I don't undervalue the care and tenderness that cause it; at the same time it adds to the strain by imposing upon me a sort of vigilance, a constant effort to behave normally.

It is infinitely and deeply touching to feel love all about me; but in such a state of mind as mine, one is shy of emotion, one dreads it, one shuns it. I suppose it argues a want of simplicity, of perfect manfulness, to feel this; but few or no women can instinctively feel the difference. In a real and deep affliction, one that could be frankly confessed, the more affection and sympathy that one can have the better; it is the one thing that sustains. But my unhappiness is not a real thing altogether, not a FRANK thing; the best medicine for it is to think as little about it; the only help one desires is the evidence that one does not need sympathy; and sympathy only turns one's thoughts inwards, and makes one feel that one is forlorn and desolate, when the only hope is to feel neither.