shame that he had gathered in
his mind, to trouble him for too long a time; presently he would light up
the room, and leave all the old darkness of his life behind him, and from
henceforth he would walk in the day.

He could still distinguish, though very vaguely, the pile of papers
beside him, and he remembered, now, that he had finished a long task that
afternoon, before he fell asleep. He could not trouble himself to
recollect the exact nature of the work, but he was sure that he had done
well; in a few minutes, perhaps, he would strike a match, and read the
title, and amuse himself with his own forgetfulness. But the sight of the
papers lying there in order made him think of his beginnings, of those
first unhappy efforts which were so impossible and so hopeless. He saw
himself bending over the table in the old familiar room, desperately
scribbling, and then laying down his pen dismayed at the sad results
on the page. It was late at night, his father had been long in bed, and
the house was still. The fire was almost out, with only a dim glow here
and there amongst the cinders, and the room was growing chilly. He rose
at last from his work and looked out on a dim earth and a dark and cloudy
sky.

Night after night he had labored on, persevering in his effort, even
through the cold sickness of despair, when every line was doomed as it
was made. Now, with the consciousness that he knew at least the
conditions of literature, and that many years of thought and practice had
given him some sense of language, he found these early struggles both
pathetic and astonishing. He could not understand how he had
persevered so stubbornly, how he had had the heart to begin a fresh page
when so many folios of blotted, painful effort lay torn, derided,
impossible in their utter failure. It seemed to him that it must have
been a miracle or an infernal possession, a species of madness, that had
driven him on, every day disappointed, and every day hopeful.

And yet there was a joyous side to the illusion. In these dry days that
he lived in, when he had bought, by a long experience and by countless
hours of misery, a knowledge of his limitations, of the vast gulf that
yawned between the conception and the work, it was pleasant to think of a
time when all things were possible, when the most splendid design seemed
an affair of a few weeks. Now he had come to a frank acknowledgment; so
far as he was concerned, he judged every book wholly im