Michael Cox

After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn__ for an oyster supper.

The boundaries of this world are forever shifting _ from day to night, joy to sorrow, love to hate, and from life itself to death; and who can say at what moment we may suddenly cross over the border, from one state of existence to another, like heat applied to some flammable substance? I have been given my own ever-changing margins, across which I move, continually and hungrily, like a migrating animal. Now civilized, now untamed; now responsive to decency and human concern, now viciously attuned to the darkest of desires.

The summer passed quietly. I busied myself as best I could, reading a good deal.

I had retained little of what is generally called religion, except for a visceral conviction that our lives are controlled by some universal mechanism that is greater than ourselves. Perhaps that was what others called God. Perhaps not.

For Death is the meaning of night;The eternal shadowInto which all lives must fall, All hopes expire.

I long for sleep, and for soft English rain. But they do not come.