No one pays any attention to me, no one, except yourself, has ever troubled to discover my thoughts on any subject, and often, when I have been inclined to think myself the most miserable of men, I have found correction in the memory of my boyish belief in my genius. . . . Such changes of fortune as I have had have come to me through women. All the kindness I ever received came through them, and every disaster that has crushed me has arisen through my inability to stop myself from falling in love with them. . . . You will understand what I mean when I talk of the life of the mind. That life has always been with me, and it has perhaps been my only real life. I have had great adventures in it. I have aimed and wrestled and struggled toward a goal that has many times seemed to me immediately attainable." He paused and brushed back his hair, and his eyes set into an expression of extraordinary wistful longing and into his voice came a sweetness most musical and moving. "There is, I believe, a condition within the reach of all men wherein the selfish self is shed, the barrier broken down between a man and his vision and purpose, so that his whole force can be concentrated upon his object and his every deed and every thought becomes an act of love. I have many a time come within reach of this condition, but always just when I seemed most sure I have toppled over head and ears in love with some woman, whom in a very short space of time I despised and detested. When I met you I was uplifted and exalted and come nearer to my goal than ever before, and now, more fatuously, more idiotically than ever, I am in love. . . . I give it up. I am forced to the conclusion that I am one of those unhappy beings who are condemned to live between one state and the other, to be neither a slave bent on eating, drinking, sleeping and the grosser pleasures, nor a free man satisfying his every lust and every desire, by the way, only the more sturdily and mightily to go marching on with the great army of friends, lovers and comrades. . . . In short, Mr. Mole, I am done for."