What he himself wanted, more than anything else, was to give way to the impulses within himself. “It must have been that, when I was a boy and my imagination played madly over all the life about me, I was intended to be something other than the dull clod I have been all these years. In Natalie’s presence, as in the presence of a tree or a field, I can be myself. I dare say I shall have to be a little careful sometimes as I do not want to be declared insane and locked up somewhere, but Natalie will help me in that. In a way my letting go of myself will be an expression for both of us. In her own way she also has been locked within a prison. Walls have been erected about her too. “It may just be, you see, that there is something of the poet in me and Natalie should have a poet for a lover. “The truth is that I shall be at the job of in some way bringing grace and meaning into my life. It must be after all that it is for something of the sort life is intended. “In reality it would not be such a bad thing if, in the few years of life I have left, I accomplish nothing of importance. When one comes right down to it accomplishment is not the vital thing in a life. “As things are now, here in this town and in all the other towns and cities I have ever been in, things are a good deal in a muddle. Everywhere lives are lived without purpose. Men and women either spend their lives going in and out of the doors of houses and factories or they own houses and factories and they live their lives and find themselves at last facing death and the end of life without having lived at all.” He kept smiling at himself and his own thoughts as he walked up and down the room and occasionally he stopped walking and made an elaborate bow to the Virgin. “I hope you are a true virgin,” he said. “I brought you into this room and into the presence of my nude body because I thought you would be that. You see, being a virgin, you cannot have anything but pure thoughts.” IV Quite often, during the day-time, and after the time when the nightly ceremony in his room began, John Webster had moments of fright. “Suppose,” he thought, “my wife and daughter should look through the keyhole into my room some night, and should decide to have me locked up instead of coming in here and giving me the chance I want to talk with them. As the matter stands I cannot carry out my plans unless I can get the two of them into the room without asking them to come.”