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I might get Nancy yet,beat down her resistance,overcome her,if only Icould be near her and see her.But even in the midst of these surges of passion I was conscious of the birth of a new force I did not understand,and which I resented,that had arisen to give battle to my passions and desires.This struggle was not mentally reflected as a debate between right and wrong,as to whether I should or should not be justified in taking Nancy if I could get her:it seemed as though some new and small yet dogged intruder had forced an entrance into me,an insignificant pigmy who did not hesitate to bar the pathway of the reviving giant of my desires.These contests sapped my strength.It seemed as though in my isolation I loved Nancy,I missed her more than ever,and the flavour she gave to life.

Then Hermann Krebs began to press himself on me.I use the word as expressive of those early resentful feelings,--I rather pictured him then as the personification of an hostile element in the universe that had brought about my miseries and accomplished my downfall;I attributed the disagreeable thwarting of my impulses to his agency;I did not wish to think of him,for he stood somehow for a vague future I feared to contemplate.Yet the illusion of his presence,once begun,continued to grow upon me,and I find myself utterly unable to describe that struggle in which he seemed to be fighting as against myself for my confidence;that process whereby he gradually grew as real to me as though he still lived--until I could almost hear his voice and see his smile.At moments I resisted wildly,as though my survival depended on it;at other moments he seemed to bring me peace.One day I recalled as vividly as though it were taking place again that last time I had been with him;I seemed once more to be listening to the calm yet earnest talk ranging over so many topics,politics and government,economics and science and religion.Idid not yet grasp the synthesis he had made of them all,but I saw them now all focussed in him elements he had drawn from human lives and human experiences.I think it was then I first felt the quickenings of a new life to be born in travail and pain....Wearied,yet exalted,I sank down on a stone bench and gazed out at the little island of Santa Cruz afloat on the shimmering sea.