were born in me. And mine is a genius that has been given to no one else. The genius itself enables me to be thoroughly convinced of this.
It is hopeless, never-ending loneliness!
My ancestors in their Highlands—some of them—were endowed with second sight. My genius is not in the least like second sight. That savors of the supernatural, the mysterious. My genius is a sound, sure, earthly sense, with no suggestion of mystery or occultism. It is an inner sense that enables me to feel and know things that I could not possibly put into thought, much less into words. It makes me know and analyze with deadly minuteness every keen, tiny damnation in my terrible lonely life. It is a mirror that shows me myself and something in myself in a merciless brilliant light, and the sight at once sickens and maddens me and fills me with an unnamed woe. It is something unspeakably dreadful.
