I covered the page; I covered a second; and half-way down the third I judged my statement to be sufficient.  Again I laid down my pen, leaned back, and waited.

The Preface also produced no result whatever.

Again I considered; and then I saw more clearly.  It came to me that, both in the first statement and in the Preface, I was merely talking to myself.  I was convincing myself, and losing both time and strength in doing so.  The Power with which I sought to come to grips was treating my vapourings with high disregard.  To be snubbed thus by Headquarters would never, never do....

Then I saw more clearly still.  It seemed that my right to challenge was denied.  I was not an adversary, with the rights and honours of an adversary, but a trangressor, whose trangression had already several times been sharply visited, and would be visited once more the moment it was repeated.  I might, in a sense, please myself whether I brought myself into Court; but, once there, I was not the arraigner in the box, but the arraigned in the dock.

And I rebelled hotly.  Did I sit there, ready for the struggle, only to be told that there could be no struggle?  Did that vengeful Angel of the Arts ignore my very existence?...  By Yea and Nay I swore that he should take notice of me!  Once before, a mortal had wrestled a whole night with an angel, and though he had been worsted, it had not been before he had compelled the Angel to reveal himself!  And so would I...

Challenge, title to challenge, tentatives, preliminaries, I suddenly cast them all aside.  We would have it in deeds, not in further words.  I opened a drawer, took out the whole of the “Life” so far written, and began to read.  I wanted to grasp once more the plan of it in its entirety.

Page after page, I read on, with deepening attention.  Quickly I ran through half of it.  Then I began to concentrate myself still more closely.  There would come a point at which I should be flush with the stream of it again, again feel the force of its current; I felt myself drawing nearer to that point; when I should reach it I would go ahead without a pause...

I read to the end of Chapter Fifteen, the last completed chapter.  Then instantly I took my pen and wrote, “Chapter Sixteen....”

I felt the change at the very first word.

* * * * *

I will not retraverse any ground I have covered before.  If I have not already made clear my former sensations of the petrefaction of hand and brain, I despair of being able to do so any better now.  Suffice it that once more I felt that inhibition, and that once more I was aware of the ubiquitous presence of the image of the dead artist.  Once more I heard those voices, near as thunder and yet interstellarly remote, crying that solemn warning, that though I took the Wings of the Morning, made my bed in Hell, or cried aloud upon the darkness to cover me, there was one Spirit from which I could not hope to escape.  I felt the slight crawling of my flesh on my bones as I listened.