or, a hundred-weight at a time, till I could swing four tons--see
the solid metals flow--enjoy the gliding sounds of the handle,
crank-shaft, and system of levers, forcing inwards the mould-end, and
the upper and lower plungers, for pressing the material--build at ease
in a travelling-cage--and watch from my hut-door through sleepless
hours, under the electric moonlight of this land, the three piles of
gold stones, the silver panels, the two-foot squares of jet, and be
comforted; and how the putty-wash--but it is past, it is past: and not
to live over again that vulgar nightmare of means and ends have I taken
to this writing again--but to put down something else, if I dare.

Seventeen years, my good God, of that delusion! I could write down no
sort of explanation for all those groans and griefs, at which a
reasoning being would not shriek with laughter. I should have lived at
ease in some palace of the Middle-Orient, and burned my cities: but no,
I must be 'a good man'--vain thought. The words of a wild madman, that
preaching man in England who prophesied what happened, were with me,
where he says: 'the defeat of Man is _His_ defeat'; and I said to
myself: 'Well, the last man shall not be quite a fiend, just to spite
That Other.' And I worked and groaned, saying: 'I will be a good man,
and burn nothing, nor utter aught unseemly, nor debauch myself, but
choke back the blasphemies that Those Others shriek through my throat,
and build and build, with moils and groans.' And it was Vanity: though I
do love the house, too, I love it well, for it is my home on the waste
earth.

I had calculated to finish it in twelve years, and I should undoubtedly
have finished it in fourteen, instead of in sixteen and seven months,
but one day, when the south, north, and east platform-steps were already
finished--it was in the July of the third year, and near sunset--as I
left off work, instead of going to the tent where my dinner lay ready, I
walked down to the ship--most strangely--in a daft, mechanical sort of
way, without saying a word to myself, an evil-meaning smile of malice on
my lips; and at midnight I was lying off Mitylene, thirty miles to the
south, having bid, as I thought, a last farewell to all those toils. I
was going to burn Athens.

I did not, however: but kept on my way westward round Cape Matapan,
intending to destroy the forests and towns of Sicily, if I found there a
suitable motor for travelling, for I had not been a