Here, then, was a problem. I must learn to amuse myself, I must cultivate my own acquaintance; I must make friends with my own identity. This was not difficult, for we possessed a mutual friend—a close, personal, dearly intimate friend. One who had been with me in the mines of Mexico and on the alkali plains of Texas. Together we had paced the white decks of yachts in summer; had spent the evenings in my library, and the days in my color factory in the winter. A friend, who, by special permission of the warden came to live with me, to share my degradation. Wasn’t he a good fellow? I consulted my friend: I have always done so. I am consulting him now, for I am smoking my favorite pipe. The introduction took place, was accepted on both sides, and I formed the acquaintance, and afterwards friendship, of my own Imagination. My new friend—I hope you will meet him some day, if you have not done so already—taught me to “penetrate the veil,” to look right through and beyond and above all conditions. I cultivated the friendship of Imagination still further, and the whole earth and its fulness became mine. No one could sentence my thoughts to imprisonment, they were free. I began to live mentally. It was my birthday. He counselled me not to waste those years. “What an opportunity!” he said. So for twenty months I devoured books from the prison library. No telephones, or duns, or bores could interrupt me; there were no social duties, no business to interfere. I read, I dreamed, I improvised. Then it was but a step to writing, and I must say Imagination was very nasty about that. He made me review my grammar with diligence. To satisfy him, I had to study rhetoric anew. He opened my eyes. The Death-Chamber was full of—_life_. There was Romance, Tragedy, of course; and even Comedy looked in through the skylight and set me laughing now and then. Material was all around me; stories about the Death-Chamber came into my mind so quickly that I could not write half of them down; they sprang up and choked me, where before had been only barren land. I set down the least horrible, for some—yes, many—could not be printed; and if you have found these grim or out of line, it is because of environment and of their truth. Then Imagination and I went away to England. We wrote a novel. In it are no prisoners and no crime, but it is full of the sea, brave men, a cruel woman. It is a tale of love.