,
frosty winds that ate into the very bone and made a fellow curse God as
he leaned obliquely against them.

I learned how little a summer cottage was worth--in winter.

Mrs. Rond lent me a huge-bellied stove, the fireplace no longer proving
of comfort.

But though I kept the stove so hot that it glowed red, I still had to
hug it close, my overcoat on, and a pair of huge, woollen socks that I'd
bought at the general store down in West Grove.

But, despite the intense cold, I worked and worked ... my play, _Judas_
was nearing completion ... its publication would mean the beginning of
my life as a man of letters, my "coming out" in the literary world.

I ate my food from open cans, not taking the trouble to cook.

At night (I had pulled my bed out close to the stove) I heaped all the
blankets in the house over me, and still shivered ... I lived on the
constant stimulus of huge draughts of coffee....

"Only a little while longer ... only a few days more ... and the play
will then be finished ... and it will be published. And it will be
produced.

"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