The floodgates of my mind, my inspiration, broke loose.  I rose to my super-self.  And now if a horrible thing had stood grey at my elbow, unmoved, I would have looked it unflinchingly in the sightless visage....

My pencil raced over paper ... raced and raced.

“Here it comes ... just like your good rain, so kind to earth....  Oh, beautiful God, I thank Thee for making me a poet,” I prayed, tears streaming down my face.

* * * * *

The second act of Judas stood complete, as if it had written itself.

I rose.  It seemed hardly an hour had passed.

It took me a few minutes to work the numbness out of my legs.  How they ached!  I stepped out of the tent-door like a drunken man ... fell on my face in some bushes and bled from several scratches.  The blare of what was full daylight hurt my eyes.  I had been writing on, entranced, by unneeded lamp, when unheeded day burned about me.

Stepping inside again, I saw by my Ingersoll that it was twelve o’clock.  I fell into a deep sleep, still dressed ...  I was so exhausted.  Usually I slept absolutely naked.

* * * * *

These were the things that happened while Penton was in jail because he played tennis on Sunday.

* * * * *

Now I was part and parcel of the household, no longer a stranger-friend on a visit.  Though Penton’s jail-experience did not thrill me, the continued thronging of reporters did, as did Baxter’s raging desire to do good for the poor ordinary prisoners in jail.  He had got at several of them who had received a raw deal in the courts, and was moving heaven and earth to bring redress to them.  He gave interviews, dictated articles ... the State officials were furious.  “What’s the matter with the fellow?  What’s he bother about the other fellows for, he ought to be glad he’s not in their shoes!"...

In agitations for the public good, in humanitarian projects, Baxter was indeed a great man ...  I loomed like a pigmy beside him.

* * * * *

Darrie and I in dialogue: 

She met me on the path, as I was proceeding toward the big house.  She carried Carpenter’s Love’s Coming of Age in her hand.  She was dressed daintily.  Her brown eyes smiled at me, and a rich dimple broke in her cheek.

But Darrie was taller than Hildreth, and I like small women best; perhaps because I am myself so big.

“Don’t go up to the house, Johnnie.”

“I want a book from the library.”

“Hildreth and Penton are there.  Hildreth is having a soul-state.”

“A what?” I laughed.

“Oh, she thinks something is the matter with her soul, and, for the three hundredth time since I’ve known them, Penton and she are discussing their lives together.”

“I don’t see anything to jest about in that.”