This book has been my companion through some very strange, sad, terrible, and joyful hours; my faithful companion, my silent friend, my true confessor. I have felt the need of utterance, the imperative instinct--the most primitive, the most childish of instincts--to tell my pains and hopes and dreams. I could not utter them, at the time, to another. I could not let the voice of my groaning reach the ears of any human being. Perhaps it would have been better for us both, if I could have said it all to my dearest Maud. But a sort of courtesy forbade my redoubling my monotonous lamentations; her burden was heavy enough without that. I can hardly dignify it with the name of manliness or chivalry, because my frame of mind during those first months, when I lost the power of writing, was purely despicable; and then, too, I did not want sympathy; I wanted help; and help no one but God could give me; half my time was spent in a kind of dumb prayer to Him, that He would give me some sort of strength, some touch of courage; for a helpless cowardice was the note of my frame of mind. Well, He has sent me strength--I recognise that now--not by lightening the load, but by making it insupportably heavy and yet showing me that I had the strength to carry it; I am still in the dark as to why I deserved so sore a punishment, and I cannot yet see that the loneliness to which He has condemned me is the help that is proportioned to my need. But I walk no longer in a vain shadow. I have known affliction by the rod of His wrath. But the darkness in which I walk is not the darkness of thickening gloom, but the darkness of the breaking day. And then, too, I suppose that writing down my thoughts from day to day just eased the dumb pain of inaction, as the sick man shifts himself in his bed. Anyhow it is written, and it shall stand as a record.