did not know. It seemed the only safety for us both,
the one rock still left in the wild ocean of our passion--an absolute
denial to the rushing feelings to find expression in the least of acts
or words.

I did not believe nor think she could misunderstand me. I felt sure the
struggle and the suffering and the desire must be printed in my face. I
knew she must see in it that I was not cold before the despairing,
passionate longing I saw stirring all her pained, excited frame. To me
it seemed as if she must see me ageing and my face lining before her
eyes. I held her hand in mine hard for a moment. Then I dropped it
gently, and she looked at me--stunned. And so, unkissed, untouched by
my lips that ached so desperately for hers, I left her and went out
through the passages and down the steps and out of the hotel into the
brilliant streets with my nerves strung tense to sheer agony.

I had acted, of course, in a correct and orthodox manner. No one could
reproach me for the interview just past, but in my heart there was a
self-condemning voice. Pleasure seldom unveils her face and offers
herself to us twice, and Venus is a dangerous goddess to offend. I
said, "Wait, wait," and "to-morrow," but those ominous lines beat dully
through my brain--

"to daurion tis oiden;
os oun et eudi estin."

When I reached my hotel, thought, intelligent thought, seemed
collapsing, and my brain spinning round and round within my skull.

"The end of me," I muttered, "at this rate will certainly be a cell in
a lunatic asylum."

For the first time, I released my rule against drugs. I sent the hotel
porter for a draught of chloral. When it came I drank it, and, in the
middle of the brilliant afternoon sunshine, threw myself on the bed,
conscious of nothing but a longing for oblivion. Unaccustomed to it,
the drug seized well upon me. For long, merciful, quiet hours I knew
nothing.

After this there came a blank of many days: idle, barren days, in which
I did nothing, knew nothing except that I suffered. My brain seemed
blank, empty, like a quarry of black slate. The power that seemed to
dwell there at times was gone now; crushed all that impersonal emotion
of the writer's mind by the blighting personal emotion of the man.

A fortnight passed, and at the end of it I had done nothing; another
week, and then another, and I had still not written a line.

At last one night, sitting idle in the cafe after dinner, I felt the
old impulse