There were moments when I thought of suicide. At times my life appeared
before me in bleak, relentless light, a series of ignorances, crude
blunderings, degradation and cruelty. I had what the old theologians
call a "conviction of sin." I sought salvation--not perhaps in the
formula a Methodist preacher would recognise but salvation nevertheless.

Men find their salvation nowadays in many ways. Names and forms don't, I
think, matter very much; the real need is something that we can hold
and that holds one. I have known a man find that determining factor in
a dry-plate factory, and another in writing a history of the Manor. So
long as it holds one, it does not matter. Many men and women nowadays
take up some concrete aspect of Socialism or social reform. But
Socialism for me has always been a little bit too human, too set about
with personalities and foolishness. It isn't my line. I don't like
things so human. I don't think I'm blind to the fun, the surprises, the
jolly little coarsenesses and insufficiency of life, to the "humour of
it," as people say, and to adventure, but that isn't the root of the
matter with me. There's no humour in my blood. I'm in earnest in warp
and woof. I stumble and flounder, but I know that over all these merry
immediate things, there are other things that are great and serene, very
high, beautiful things--the reality. I haven't got it, but it's there
nevertheless. I'm a spiritual guttersnipe in love with unimaginable
goddesses. I've never seen the goddesses nor ever shall--but it takes
all the fun out of the mud--and at times I fear it takes all the
kindliness, too.

But I'm talking of things I can't expect the reader to understand,
because I don't half understand them myself. There is something links
things for me, a sunset or so, a mood or so, the high air, something