[April 13.]
I AM sitting writing out on my sand and barrenness. The sky is pale and faded now in the west, but a few minutes ago there was the same old-time, always-new miracle of roses and gold, and glints and gleams of silver and green, and a river in vermilions and purples—and lastly the dear, the beautiful: the red, red line.
There also are heavy black shadows.
I have given my heart into the keeping of this.
And still, as always, I look at it—and feel it all with thrilling passion—and await the Devil’s coming.
[L’ENVOI:
October 28, 1901.]
AND so there you have my Portrayal. It is the record of three months of Nothingness. Those three months are very like the three months that preceded them, to be sure, and the three that followed them—and like all the months that have come and gone with me, since time was. There is never anything different; nothing ever happens.
Now I will send my Portrayal into the wise wide world. It may stop short at the publisher; or it may fall still-born from the press; or it may go farther, indeed, and be its own undoing.
That’s as may be.