I had acted, of course, in a correct and orthodox manner. No one could reproach me for the interview just past, but in my heart there was a self-condemning voice. Pleasure seldom unveils her face and offers herself to us twice, and Venus is a dangerous goddess to offend. I said, "Wait, wait," and "to-morrow," but those ominous lines beat dully through my brain—
"to daurion tis oiden;
os oun et eudi estin."
When I reached my hotel, thought, intelligent thought, seemed collapsing, and my brain spinning round and round within my skull.
"The end of me," I muttered, "at this rate will certainly be a cell in a lunatic asylum."
For the first time, I released my rule against drugs. I sent the hotel porter for a draught of chloral. When it came I drank it, and, in the middle of the brilliant afternoon sunshine, threw myself on the bed, conscious of nothing but a longing for oblivion. Unaccustomed to it, the drug seized well upon me. For long, merciful, quiet hours I knew nothing.
After this there came a blank of many days: idle, barren days, in which I did nothing, knew nothing except that I suffered. My brain seemed blank, empty, like a quarry of black slate. The power that seemed to dwell there at times was gone now; crushed all that impersonal emotion of the writer's mind by the blighting personal emotion of the man.
A fortnight passed, and at the end of it I had done nothing; another week, and then another, and I had still not written a line.
At last one night, sitting idle in the cafe after dinner, I felt the old impulse stir in me, a rush of eager inclination to write went through me. A sudden sense of power filled me. The brain, empty and idle a few minutes before, became charged with energy and desire to expend it. A corresponding current of activity poured along each vein. The old familiar impetus swayed me.
I welcomed it gladly and went upstairs, got out paper and a pen, and the remembrance of my own life slipped away from me. All that night I wrote, and the next day, and the fresh manuscript was fairly started. For a whole fortnight I wrote almost incessantly. I snatched a little food in the cafe, hardly knowing what I ate.
The nights passed feverishly without sleep, while the brain revolved, excitedly, scenes written or to be written. Towards the end of the fortnight the impulses to work steadily declined. I forced myself to write at intervals; but, as usual, the forced work was worthless, and I destroyed it when it was done. No, it was no use. I could merely shrug my shoulders and smoke and wait.