No one can understand this--no one who has not a demon in his soul. No one
who does not know how I have been choked--what horrors I have borne.

I am through with that--I did not think of that. I am free! They will never
have me back.

That motive alone would drive me to my work, would make me dare _anything_.
But I do not need that motive.

* * * * *

I think only of the book. I thought of it last Saturday, and it swept me
away out of myself. I had planned the opening scene; but then the thought
of the triumph-song took hold of me, and it drove me mad. That song was
what I had thought I could never do--I had never dared to think of it.
And it came to me--it came! Wild, incoherent, overwhelming, it came, the
victorious hymn. I could not think of remembering it; it was not poetry--it
was reality. _I_ was the Captive, _I_ had won freedom--a faith and a
vision!

So it throbbed on and on, and I was choked, and my head on fire, and my
hands tingling, until I sank down from sheer exhaustion--laughing and
sobbing, and talking to God as if He were in the room. I never really
believe in God except at such times; I can go through this dreadful world
for months, and never think if there be a God.--Here I sit gossiping about
it.--But I am tired out.

* * * * *