My body was racked with a fine tremor, my brain ached. I went to my desk and took up a pencil. I sat looking into the face of the tangle as one might into the gathering front of a storm. Words moved in my brain, then bubbled, then marshaled themselves into curious lines and rhythms. I put my pencil to paper and wrote line after line. Presently I saw that I was writing a poem but that it was rough and needed modifying and polishing. I was in a great fever to change it and did so but more eager to go on with my idea, which was about this tangle of life. I became so moved and interested that I almost forgot Alice in the process. When I read it over it seemed but a poor reflection of the thoughts I had felt, the great sad mood I was in. Then I sat there, dissatisfied and unhappy, resolving to write Alice and tell her all. I took a pen and wrote her that I could not marry her now, that I was in no position to do so. Later, if I found myself in better shape financially, I would come back. I told her that I did not want to send back her letters, that I did not wish to think our love was at an end. I had not meant to run away. I closed by saying that I still loved her and that the picture she had painted of herself standing at the window in the moonlight had torn my heart. But I could not write it as effectually as I might have, for I was haunted by the idea that I should never keep my word. Something kept telling me that it was not wise, that I didn’t really want to. While I was writing Hazard came into the room and glanced over my shoulder to where the poem was lying. “What you doing, Dreiser? Writing poetry?” “Trying to,” I replied a little shamefacedly. “I don’t seem to be able to make much of it, though.” The while I was wondering at the novelty of being taken for a poet. It seemed such a fine thing to be. “There’s no money in it,” he observed helpfully. “You can’t sell ’em. I’ve written tons of ’em, but it don’t do any good. You’d better be putting your time on a book or a play.” A book or a play! I sat up. To be considered a writer, a dramatist—even a possible dramatist—raised me in my own estimation. Why, at this rate I might become one—who knows? “I know it isn’t profitable,” I said. “Still, it might be if I wrote them well enough. It would be a great thing to be a great poet.” Hazard smiled sardonically. From his pinnacle of twenty-six years such aspirations seemed ridiculous. I might be a good newspaper man (I think he was willing to admit that), but a poet!