ws of the night. Such hungry freedom I
had and have; and I could share it only with the outcasts of the world:
the fat and rotund charitable ones would none of it. This freedom is
possessed only by him who is afflicted over much with himself because he
has been crazed by others and made mad by his escape from them. I
suppose I am mad, for to believe myself perfectly sane in a greatly mad
world is surely a subtle species of lunacy. And yet I am compelled to
act towards others as if they were more sane than I. To feel as if one
were eternally in a court-room trial, with lean lunatics for lawyers and
fat philistines for judges, this is life.

"I am only one of the human victims who studies his own malady because
he likes universal history. The world has thrown me back upon myself and
made me at times what is called mad. After being down-hearted for some
time, I grow superstitious and imagine that some strange and fatal spell
is hanging over us all. Even my own acts and thoughts take on the
futility of nightmare, and Nirvana is very welcome, if I could be sure
of it, but I had rather stay what I am than start life all over again in
some other shape, with a possible creeping recollection of my former
existence. I have at times startled intimations that I lived in vain in
some former unhappy time; so I shall try to postpone the eternal
recurrence as best I may."

Thus Terry tries not only to reject the laws of "fat" society, but at
times he strives against what he imagines to be the deep laws of the
universe: he tries to stem the tide of fate, and this in the name of
Truth! It shows how far remote from reality is the truth of the
idealist; and yet such an attitude is often forced upon a sensitive
spirit by rough contact with imperfect society. Although Terry is the
most perfect specimen of the anarchists I have known, yet they all have
more or less the quality of idealism so marked in him.

Marie's letters teem with the spirit of revolt, which of course was the
atmosphere of the salon. With her it is always less ideal, more
personal, more egotistic than with Terry. In one of her letters she told
"how she was led to try to get a job again, in order to buy some pretty
things." A few days' search, however, disgusted her and brought her back
completely to the mood of the salon, and led her deeply to appreciate
_Hedda Gabler_, and to condemn American morality and the "good" people.
Of Hedda she wrote:

"Her character always di