thing, I don't know; it frightens me, and sometimes I lose all heart.

* * * * *

I suppose I shall have to begin again tonight. I must eat something first,
though. That is one of my handicaps: I wear myself out and have to stop and
eat. Will anybody ever love me for this work, will anybody ever understand
it?

I suppose I can get back where I was yesterday, but always it grows harder,
and more stern. I set my teeth together.

* * * * *

It was like the bursting of an overstrained dam, these last four days. How
long I have been pent up--eighteen months! And eighteen months seems like a
lifetime to me. I have been a bloodhound in the leash, hungering--hungering
for this thing, and the longing has piled up in me day by day. Sometimes it
has been more than I could bear; and when the time was near, I was so wild
that I was sick. The book! The book! Freedom and the book!

And last Saturday I went out of the hell-house where I have been pent so
long, and I covered my face with my hands and fled away home--away to the
little corner that is mine. There I flung myself down and sobbed like a
child. It was relief--it was joy--it was fear! It was everything! The
book! The book! Then I got up--and the world seemed to go behind me, and
I was drunk. I heard a voice calling--it thundered in my ears--that I was
free--that my hour was come--that I might live--that I might live--live!
And I could have shouted it--I know that I laughed it aloud. Every time I
thought the thought it was like the throbbing of wings to me--"Free! Free!"