n sorely tempted to
lay myself out--but not even the moon can seduce me to reveal myself. My
dead and buried self is my first and last seduction. This is crazy, of
course, but I am heartily sick of all the 'sense' I know or can know. I
believe, however, that I have lived so close to the 'truth' that its
shadow has been cast over all my life. If, in the last analysis, all is
illusion, I shall stick to the most powerful one--myself. My feeling for
Marie arises largely from the fact that she is an expression of the
irreparable part of my life--of its deepest essence.

"A year ago to-day, on the thirteenth of August," he wrote, "occurred my
first, last, and only breakaway from the best pal I have ever hoped to
have, Marie. Now that it has passed, I see it in its proper proportions,
just as if it had happened to someone else, but to one as near and dear
to me as myself. I have broken away from the Mob, too. My sympathy for
what is called the People has been worn down to a mere thread that might
easily be broken and turn me against them. When one has been stoned
long enough, one may easily turn into something as hard as stone itself.
I am like the knight of old, turned inside out. I am developing a
coating of internal mail, as so many of the attacks come from within.
But worse than attacks from within or without is the sordid security and
mental inertia of all the people about me: they are strangling me just
as surely as if they put a rope around my neck. By day they hurry on
like ghosts about their business, and by night they gather in the little
tombs of many rooms they call their homes.

"You may call it madness, this my cutting off of all things. I know that
I have kept off madness a long while now. I have shrunk from 'business'
to social anarchy and pure beings, from these again I have shrunk to
books and poetry, from these again into the solitude of myself where
only I am really at home. Though I have lost my general bearings, I
still stand at the helm of myself. I am going to pieces on the rocks of
the world, but I still inhabit the realm of the soul.

"When I could no longer see my ideals rise out of my work, I quit that
work; for then the work was no longer an expression of myself. This is
the origin of all modern problems. A man stands to his job because of
the visions that come to him only when at work. He sees in imagery his
own possibilities arise out of the thing on which he is at work, and
easily links himsel