hile? Impossible to sleep. He felt in his body the
strain of his quick sequence of spiritual adventures. He was dog-tired.
But his brain was furiously out of hand: no stopping it. And the night
was stifling. And all the while, in the dead silence, as though his soul
had ears, there was a sound. It was a very faint, unearthly sound, and
seemed to come from nowhere, yet to have a meaning. He feared he was
rather over-wrought.

He must express himself. That would soothe him. Ever since childhood
he had had, from time to time, the impulse to set down in writing
his thoughts or his moods. In such exercises he had found for his
self-consciousness the vent which natures less reserved than his find in
casual talk with Tom, Dick and Harry, with Jane, Susan, and Liz. Aloof
from either of these triads, he had in his first term at Eton taken to
himself as confidant, and retained ever since, a great quarto volume,
bound in red morocco and stamped with his coronet and cypher. It was
herein, year by year, that his soul spread itself.

He wrote mostly in English prose; but other modes were not infrequent.
Whenever he was abroad, it was his courteous habit to write in the
language of the country where he was residing--French, when he was in
his house on the Champs Elysees; Italian, when he was in his villa at
Baiae; and so on. When he was in his own country he felt himself free to
deviate sometimes from the vernacular into whatever language were aptest
to his frame of mind. In his sterner moods he gravitated to Latin,
and wrought the noble iron of that language to effects that were, if
anything, a trifle over-impressive. He found for his highest flights of
contemplation a handy vehicle in Sanscrit. In hours of mere joy it was
Greek poetry that flowed likeliest from his pen; and he had a special
fondness for the metre of Alcaeus.

And now, too, in his darkest hour, it was Greek that surged in
him--iambics of thunderous wrath such as those which are volleyed by
Prometheus. But as he sat down to his writing-table, and unlocked the
dear old album, and dipped his pen in the ink, a great calm fell on him.
The iambics in him began to breathe such sweetness as is on the lips of
Alcestis going to her doom. But, just as he set pen to paper, his hand
faltered, and he sprang up, victim of another and yet more violent fit
of sneezing.

Disbuskined, dangerous. The spirit of Juvenal woke in him. He would
flay. He would make Woman (as he called Zul