And last Saturday I went out of the hell-house where I have been pent so long, and I covered my face with my hands and fled away home--away to the little corner that is mine. There I flung myself down and sobbed like a child. It was relief--it was joy--it was fear! It was everything! The book! The book! Then I got up--and the world seemed to go behind me, and I was drunk. I heard a voice calling--it thundered in my ears--that I was free--that my hour was come--that I might live--that I might live--live! And I could have shouted it--I know that I laughed it aloud. Every time I thought the thought it was like the throbbing of wings to me--“Free! Free!” No one can understand this--no one who has not a demon in his soul. No one who does not know how I have been choked--what horrors I have borne. I am through with that--I did not think of that. I am free! They will never have me back. That motive alone would drive me to my work, would make me dare _anything_. But I do not need that motive. * * * * * I think only of the book. I thought of it last Saturday, and it swept me away out of myself. I had planned the opening scene; but then the thought of the triumph-song took hold of me, and it drove me mad. That song was what I had thought I could never do--I had never dared to think of it. And it came to me--it came! Wild, incoherent, overwhelming, it came, the victorious hymn. I could not think of remembering it; it was not poetry--it was reality. _I_ was the Captive, _I_ had won freedom--a faith and a vision! So it throbbed on and on, and I was choked, and my head on fire, and my hands tingling, until I sank down from sheer exhaustion--laughing and sobbing, and talking to God as if He were in the room. I never really believe in God except at such times; I can go through this dreadful world for months, and never think if there be a God.--Here I sit gossiping about it.--But I am tired out. * * * * * The writing of a book is like the bearing of a child. But every birth-pang of the former lasts for hours; and it is months before the labor is done.