In moments of emotion one gazes fixedly at things, hardly conscious of them.

Afterward one remembers.
I can still see the narrow room, the bare, brown, discoloured walls, the incongruous marble clock on the mantel-piece, the single rickety chair that swayed beneath me.

I could almost draw the tortuous pattern of the faded cloth that hid the round table at which I sat.

The ink was thick, pale, and sticky; the pen spluttered.

I wrote furiously, anxious to be done with it.