“Then the woman, my first and only woman, she will be with me again forever ...  I’ll take her to Italy, away from all the mess that has cluttered about our love for each other.”

* * * * *

One day, in an effort to keep the house warm—­the one room I confined myself to, rather,—­I stoked the stove so hot that the stovepipe grew red to the place where it went through the roof into the attic....

My mind, at the time, was in far-off Galilee.  I was on the last scene of the last act of my play ... the disciples, after the crucifixion, were gathered in the upper room again, waiting for the resurrected Christ to appear to take the seat left vacant for Him....

I looked up from the page over which my frosty fingers crawled....

The boards were smoking faintly.  If I didn’t act quickly the house would catch fire ...  I laughed at the thought of the curious climax it would present to the world; I imagined myself among the embers.

I must lessen the heat in the stove.  I ran and brought in a bucket of water.  I pried open the red-hot door of the stove with a stick that almost caught flame as I pried.

With a backward withdrawal, a forward heave, I shot the contents of the pail into the stove....

There followed a detonation like a siege gun.

The stove-lid shot so close to my head it was no joke ... it took out the whole window-sash and lit in the outside snow.  The stove itself, balanced on bricks under its four feet, slumped sidewise, fortunately did not collapse to the floor ... the stovepipe fell, but the wire that held it up at the bend also prevented it from touching the carpet ... the room was instantly full of suffocating soot and smoke.

I crawled forth like a scared animal ... found myself in the kitchen.  In the mirror hanging there I looked like a Senegalese.

Then, finding myself unhurt, I laughed and laughed at myself, at the grotesqueness and irony of life, at everything ... but mostly at myself.

I righted the stove as best I could, brought the door in again from where it had bitten to the bottom of the snow drift, like an angry animal.  It was still uncomfortably hot ... shifting it from hand to hand I managed to manoeuvre it back to a slant position on its hinges....

Before I could light another and more moderate fire, unexpectedly the inspiration for the completion of the last scene of Judas—­the inspiration for which I had been waiting and hoping—­rode in on me like a wave....

* * * * *

Christ, in the spirit, unseen, comes to his waiting disciples.

Thomas.  Someone has flung open the door.  The wind has blown out the candles.

Andrew.  Nay, I sit next the door.  ’Tis closed!

John.  He has risen.  He is even now among us.

Thomas.  Someone sits in the chair.  I feel a presence by my side.