ings
that had troubled me were real, and how many I had made for myself.

To tell the truth, by that time the tension was almost unbearable. My
nerves were going, and there was no reason for it. I kept telling myself
that. In the mirror I looked white and anxious, and I had a sense
of approaching trouble. I caught Maggie watching me, too, and on the
seventh I find in my journal the words: "Insanity is often only a
formless terror."

On the Sunday morning following that I found three burnt matches in
the library fireplace, and one of the candles in the brass holders was
almost gone. I sat most of the day in that room, wondering what would
happen to me if I lost my mind. I knew that Maggie was watching me, and
I made one of those absurd hypotheses to myself that we all do at times.
If any of the family came, I would know that she had sent for them, and
that I was really deranged! It had been a long day, with a steady summer
rain that had not cooled the earth, but only set it steaming. The air
was like hot vapor, and my hair clung to my moist forehead. At about
four o'clock Maggie started chasing a fly with a folded newspaper. She
followed it about the lower floor from room to room, making little harsh
noises in her throat when she missed it. The sound of the soft thud of
the paper on walls and furniture seemed suddenly more than I could bear.

"For heaven's sake!" I cried. "Stop that noise, Maggie." I felt as
though my eyes were starting from my head.

"It's a fly," she said doggedly, and aimed another blow at it. "If I
don't kill it, we'll have a million. There, it's on the mantel now. I
never--"

I felt that if she raised the paper club once more I should scream. So I
got up quickly and caught her wrist. She was so astonished that she let
the paper drop, and there we stood, staring at each other. I can still
see the way her mouth hung open.

"Don't!" I said. And my voice sounded thick even to my own ears.
"Maggie--I can't stand it!"

"My God, Miss Agnes!"

Her tone brought me up sharply. I released her arm.

"I--I'm just nervous, Maggie," I said, and sat down. I was trembling
violently.

I was sane. I knew it then as I know it now. But I was not rational.
Perhaps to most of us come now and then times when they realize that
some act, or some thought, is not balanced, as though, for a moment or
an hour, the control was gone from the brain. Or--and I think this was
the feeling I had--that some other control wa