This strange period lasts--lasts such a blessedly long time before it comes to an end. I have fifteen--twenty written pages lying on my knees before me, when at last I cease and lay my pencil aside. So sure as there is any worth in these pages, so sure am I saved. I jump out of bed and dress myself. It grows lighter. I can half distinguish the lighthouse director’s announcement down near the door, and near the window it is already so light that I could, in case of necessity, see to write. I set to work immediately to make a fair copy of what I have written. An intense, peculiar exhalation of light and colour emanates from these fantasies of mine. I start with surprise as I note one good thing after another, and tell myself that this is the best thing I have ever read. My head swims with a sense of satisfaction; delight inflates me; I grow grandiose. I weigh my writing in my hand, and value it, at a loose guess, for five shillings on the spot. It could never enter any one’s head to chaffer about five shillings; on the contrary, getting it for half-a-sovereign might be considered dirt-cheap, considering the quality of the thing. I had no intention of turning off such special work gratis. As far as I was aware, one did not pick up stories of that kind on the wayside, and I decided on half-a-sovereign. The room brightened and brightened. I threw a glance towards the door, and could distinguish without particular trouble the skeleton-like letters of Miss Andersen’s winding-sheet advertisement to the right of it. It was also a good while since the clock had struck seven. I rose and came to a standstill in the middle of the floor. Everything well considered, Mrs. Gundersen’s warning came rather opportunely. This was, properly speaking, no fit room for me; there were only common enough green curtains at the windows, and neither were there any pegs too many on the wall. The poor little rocking-chair over in the corner was in reality a mere attempt at a rocking-chair; with the smallest sense of humour, one might easily split one’s sides with laughter at it. It was far too low for a grown man, and besides that, one needed, so to speak, the aid of a boot-jack to get out of it. To cut it short, the room was not adapted for the pursuit of things intellectual, and I did not intend to keep it any longer. On no account would I keep it. I had held my peace, and endured and lived far too long in such a den.