room reels. When I am not doing that I wander around like a lost soul; I
can not think of anything else.--Sometimes when I am tired and must rest, I
force myself to sit down and write some of this.

I have just forty dollars now. It costs me three dollars a week, not
including paper and typewriting. Thus I have ten or twelve weeks in which
to finish The Captive--that many and no more.

If I am not finished by that time it will kill me; to try to work and earn
money in the state that I am in just at present would turn me into a
maniac--I should kill some one, I know.

I am quivering with nervous tension--every faculty strained to breaking;
the buzz of a fly is a roar to me. I build up these towering castles of
emotion in my soul, castles that shimmer in the sunlight:

Banners yellow, glorious, golden!

And then something happens, and they fall upon me with the weight of
mountains.

* * * * *

Ten weeks! And yet it is not that which goads me most.

What goads me most is that I am a captive in a dungeon, and am fighting for
the life of my soul.

I shall win, I do not fear--the fountains of my being will not fail me. I
saw my soul a second time to-day; it was no longer the bubble, blown large,