As I stand among the barren gulches in these days and look away at the slow-awakening hills of Montana, I hear the high, swelling, half-tired, half-hopeful song of the world. As I listen I know that there are things, other than the Virtue and the Truth and the Love, that are not for me. There is beyond me, like these, the unbreaking, undying bond of human fellowship--a thing that is earth-old. It is beyond me, and it is nothing to me. In my intensest desires--in my widest longings--I never go beyond _self_. The ego is the all. Limitless legions of women and men in weariness and in joy are one. They are killing each other and torturing each other, and going down in sorrow to the dust. But they are one. Their right hands are joined in unseen sympathy and kinship. But my two hands are apart, and clasped together in an agony of loneliness. I have read of women who have been strongly, grandly brave. Sometimes I have dreamed that I might be brave. The possibilities of this life are magnificent. To be saturated with this agony, I say at times, and to bear with it all; not to sink beneath it, but to vanquish it, and to make it the grace and comeliness of my entire life from the Beginning to the End! Perhaps a woman--a real woman--could do this. But I?--No. I am not real--I do not seem _real_ to myself. In such things as these my life is a blank. There was Charlotte Corday--a heroine whom I admire above all the heroines. And more than she was a heroine she was a woman. And she had her agony. It was for love of her fair country. To suffer and do and die for love of something! It is glorious! What must be the exalted ecstasy of Charlotte Corday’s soul now! And I--with all my manifold passions--I am a coward. I have had moments when, vaguely and from far off, it seemed as if there might be bravery and exaltation for me,--when I could rise far over myself. I have felt unspeakable possibilities. While they lasted--what wonderful emotion was it that I felt? But they are not real. They fade away--they fade away. And again come the varied phenomena of my life to bewilder and terrify me. Confusion! Chaos! Damnation! They are not moments of exaltation now. Poor little Mary MacLane! “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.” I do not know what to do. I do not know what were good to do. I would do nothing if I knew. I might add to my litany this: Most kind Devil, deliver me--from myself. March 16. To-day I walked over the sand, and it was almost beautiful. The sun was sinking and the sky was filled with roses and gold. Then came my soul and confronted me. My soul is wondrous fair. It is like a young woman. The beauty of it is too great for human eyes to look upon. It is too great for mine. Yet I look. My soul said to me: “I am sick.” I answered: “And I am sick.”