Oh well, I dare say if you wished me to love you, you have accomplished your purpose most successfully. There is nothing in life but you, and to suddenly acquire a new self is most startling, and something hard to believe. Thyrsis, I simply cannot realize that I may go to you and find peace and security.
XXVII. MY DEAREST CORYDON:
I have just a few words to say. I have two weeks left in which to shake off my shoulders the fearful animal that has been tearing me. For just three weeks to-day, not a line written!
The task seems almost beyond my powers. God, will people ever know how I have worked over this book!
But unless you develop some new doubt, or I persist in writing letters, I ought to get it done now. I shall see you as soon as I have finished, and meantime I shall write no letters.
XXVIII. DEAR THYRSIS:
I would give a great deal to let you know how I have struggled and suffered.
I have had almost more than I could bear—the more horrible because the more unreasonable. You must know it. If it disturbs you, please put the letter away until a favorable time. I account my trouble greatly physical—I have never been in such a nervous state. The murky despair that has come over me—that I have writhed and struggled in, as in the clutches of some fiend! It seems to me I have experienced every torment of each successive stage of Dante’s Inferno. I know what is the emotion of a soul in all the bloom and hope of youth, condemned to die.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night—and felt as if a monster sat by to throw a black cloth over me and smother me. I got up and shook myself, and my heart was beating violently.
I managed to get myself free. This morning I am better. God in Heaven only knows—I would rather be torn limb from limb, yes, honestly, than endure the blackness of soul that I have had through all these years of strife and failure by myself.