It was a calm, still night, and I sat watching the lights on the water. Then suddenly I recollected the night when the yacht had passed, and I had heard the woman singing. It came back to me like an apparition, that voice and that melody. I heard it again more plainly than words can tell, dying away over the water; and a perfect sea of woe rolled over my soul. I thought of that night, what I had been that night, what hopes I had had, what fervor, what purpose, what faith. That was, you remember, just when I was at the height of my work; and the memory came back to me, as it has never come back to me since the day that I came out of the forest with my book. It simply overwhelmed me, it shook me to the very depths of my being. I buried my face and burst out sobbing. It shook away from me all the hideous dulness that had mastered me. I saw myself as I was, ruined, lost. I cried out: “Oh, my Father in heaven, it is gone! It is gone, and it will never come back! I am a lost soul! I am a traitor, I am ruined!” So I went on, feverishly, twisting my hands together. “I have given up the fight! I have been beaten--oh, my God--beaten! Think of those raging hours in the woods, those hours of defiance, of glory! I gazed at commonplaceness and dulness--I mocked at it; and now it has conquered me! I am trampled down, beaten! It is all gone out of me!” And then I cried out in despair and terror: “Oh, no, it can't be! It _can't_ be!” But even while I cried that, my thoughts fled back to the horror to which I was tied, to the samples of soap and to the filthy hole next to a drunken laborer. The thing overwhelmed me, even while I stood there trying to resolve. I was frenzied. “I have done everything,” I panted, “I have fought and toiled and struggled--I have wept and prayed, and even begged. And yet I have been beaten--I have gone down--down! And what more is there that I can do? I shall be beaten down again! Oh, what shall I do? Is there any hope, any new plan that I can try? Shall I go through the streets and shriek it; shall I lay hold upon some man and _make_ him hear me? Is there anything--_anything_?” To make them understand what I have! To make them understand what they are doing! God gave me a vision--it may not come again for a century, it can never come again--it is mine--_mine only_! And they grind it into the dust! This demon power that is in me--don't you suppose I know what it is? This thing that roars like the wind upon the mountains, that runs like the great billows on the sea!