I wonder what would have happened had I overtaken them in pursuit,
breathless with running, uttering incoherent words, weeping,
expostulatory. I came near to doing that.
There was nothing in earth or heaven to respect my curses or weeping. In
the midst of it a man who had been trimming the opposite hedge appeared
and stared at me.
Abruptly, ridiculously, I dissembled before him and went on and caught
my train....
But the pain I felt then I have felt a hundred times; it is with me as
I write. It haunts this book, I see, that is what haunts this book, from
end to end.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
NIGHT AND THE OPEN SEA
I
I have tried throughout all this story to tell things as they happened
to me. In the beginning--the sheets are still here on the table, grimy
and dogs-eared and old-looking--I said I wanted to tell MYSELF and the
world in which I found myself, and I have done my best. But whether I
have succeeded I cannot imagine. All this writing is grey now and dead
and trite and unmeaning to me; some of it I know by heart.
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