So Miss Lily Walker and I are quits at this game.

It totals up evenly, all ways around.

Nobody gets through one Real day—though it be a dayful of Real lies—without a demoniacal struggle of soul or a heavy blow on the personal solar plexus.

And I make not even the intellect side of this book, which is a Realness to me, without sweet fine sweatings of blood.

[Instinct—a ‘first law’]

To-morrow

I LONG to do a Murder.

Despite my futile way-of-life and my rotting destroying half-acquiescence in it I have a furious positive Murder in me.

One near me in my daily life injures me and goes on injuring me in a way which is scourging and malicious and intensely petty. There is in it helpless humiliation for me—me self-loving, proud and determinedly unsuppliant—and it makes maddening Murder rise in me.