To-day I thought I would go up and see him—I thought I could not live until I knew what this thing meant. I heard myself saying, “I demand to know why you treated me thus? I say I demand it! Before God, how dared you—or don't you believe in a God?”
—Then again I thought, I will plead with him. It must be some mistake—I can't believe that it is all over. Why, he liked it! And now perhaps it was only looked over by some careless reader and flung aside!
But no—I could not go near the place! I could not face that man again. The memory of his look as he stood there in his insolence is so hateful to me that it makes me tremble.
April 26th.
I see myself crying this out from the housetops. I even wrote a letter to a newspaper, but I did not send it.
I went to a lawyer, a man I used to know. I told him I had no money—I asked him to help me. But I can not sue him—he was under no obligations, it seems; and I can not prove that the manuscript was injured in value by the delay.
So there is nothing that I can do. He will go his way—he will never think of me again. He is rich and famous.—