The water--the dark still water at the bottom--would gurgle over me and make an end quickly. Or if I feared there was not enough water, I would bring with me a syringe and some morphine and inject an immense quantity into one white arm, and kneel over the tender darkness until my youth-weary, waiting-worn senses should be overcome, and my slim, light body should fall. It would splash into the water at the bottom--it would follow the little stones at last. And the black, muddy water would soak in and begin the destroying of my body, and murky bubbles would rise so long as my lungs continued to breathe. Or perhaps my body would fall against the side of the hole, and the head would lie against it out of the water. Or perhaps only the face would be out of the water, turned upward to the light above--or turned half-down, and the hair would be darkly wet and heavy, and the face would be blue-white below it, and the eyes would sink inward. “The End, the End!” I say softly and ecstatically. Yet I do not lean farther out. My hand does not loosen its tight grasp on the wooden stake. I am only flirting with Death now. Death is fascinating--almost like the Devil. Death makes use of all his arts and wiles, powerful and alluring, and flirts with deadly temptation for me. And I make use of my arts and wiles--and tempt him. Death would like dearly to have me, and I would like dearly to have him. It is a flirtation that has its source in mutual desire. We do not love each other, Death and I,--we are not friends. But we desire each other sensually, lustfully. Sometime I suppose I shall yield to the desire. I merely play at it now--but in an unmistakable manner. Death knows it is only a question of time. But first the Devil must come. First the Devil, then Death: a deep dark soothing grave--and the early evening, “and a little folding of the hands to sleep.” February 12. I am in no small degree, I find, a sham--a player to the gallery. Possibly this may be felt as you read these analyses. While all of these emotions are written in the utmost seriousness and sincerity, and are exactly as I feel them, day after day--so far as I have the power to express what I feel--still I aim to convey through them all the idea that I am lacking in the grand element of Truth--that there is in the warp and woof of my life a thread that is false--false. I don’t know how to say this without the fear of being misunderstood. When I say I am in a way a sham, I have no reference to the truths as I have given them in this Portrayal, but to a very light and subtle thing that runs through them. Oh, do not think for an instant that this analysis of my emotions is not perfectly sincere and real, and that I have not felt all of them more than I can put into words. They are my tears--my life-blood!