_Friday Night, November 6th_.
I fastened my door, and when I went to bed lay awake for hours
listening. A horror was upon me then which has not left me since for a
moment, which may never leave me. I shivered with cold that night, the
cold born of sheer physical terror. I knew that I was shut up in the
house with a soul bent on unreasoning vengeance, the soul of the animal
which I had killed prisoned in the body of the woman I had married. I
was sick with fear then. I am sick with fear now.
To-night I am so tired. My eyes are heavy and my head aches. No wonder.
I have not slept for three nights. I have not dared to sleep.
This strange revolution in my wife’s conduct, this passionless
change--for I felt instinctively that warm humanity had nothing to do
with the transformation--took place three nights ago. These three last
days Mar-got has been playing a part. With what object?
When I sat down to this gray record of two souls--at once dreary and
fantastic as it would seem, perhaps, to many--I desired to reassure
myself, to write myself into sweet reason, into peace.
I have tried to accomplish the impossible. I feel that the wildest
theory may be the truest, after all--that on the borderland of what
seems madness, actuality paces.
Every remembrance of my mind confirms the truth first suggested to me by
Professor Black.