1 You are now in the bitter waters, my child.
2 A whole night lost, and I know by bitter experience what may happen in a night.
3 And, to our bitter grief, with a smile and in silence, he died, a gallant gentleman.
4 The wind came now with fiercer and more bitter sweeps, and more steadily from the north.
5 The morning is bitterly cold; the furnace heat is grateful, though we have heavy fur coats.
6 He had, I knew, been very genuinely and devotedly attached to his father; and to lose him, and at such a time, was a bitter blow to him.
7 Now, since I know it is all true, a hundred thousand times more do I know that he must pass through the bitter waters to reach the sweet.
8 Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood.
9 Take it and keep it, read it if you will, but never let me know; unless, indeed, some solemn duty should come upon me to go back to the bitter hours, asleep or awake, sane or mad, recorded here.