Another, and very favourite set of pictures, is the one in which I receive the two millions from Mr. Rockefeller--or whoever he is--and immediately make a public renunciation of it. With wise fore-thought I found great pensions for underpaid clergy. I inaugurate societies by means of which authors who could do really artistic work, but are forced to pot-boil in order to live, may take a cheque and work out their great thoughts without any worldly embarrassments. I myself reserve one hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds a year and go and work among the poor in an East-end slum. At the same time I am most anxious that this great renunciation should be widely spoken of. I must be interviewed in all the papers. The disdainful nobility of my sacrifice for Christ's sake must be well advertised. Indeed all my Folies de Grandeur are nothing else but exaggerated megalomania. I must be in the centre of the picture always. Spartan or Sybarite I must be glorified. * * * * * Another symptom which is very marked is that of spasmodic and superstitious prayer. When my heated brain falls away from its kaleidoscopic pictures of grandeur owing to sheer weariness; when my wire-tight nerves are strained to breaking point by the despotism of "touchings," the tyranny of "Thirteen" and "Seven," the nervous misery of the Sign of the Cross, I try to sum up all the ritual and to escape the whole welter of false obligation by spasmodic prayer. I suppose that I say "God-the-Father-help-me" about two or three hundred times a day. I shut my eyes and throw the failing consciousness of myself into the back of my head, and then I say it--in a sort of hot feverish horror, "God-the-Father-help-me." I vary this, too. When my thoughts or my actions have been more despicable than usual, I jerk up an appeal to God the Father. When fluid _sentiment_ is round me it is generally Jesus on whom I call. . . . I cannot write any more of this, it is too horrible even to write. But God knows how true it is! * * * * *