“OUT”

The Rotterdam canals were choked with barges, weighted with freight; heavy trucks rattled down the streets, a whistle shrieked, telegraph wires hummed, motors flashed by—men were moving quickly, grouping themselves freely at corners; life—vivid, outspoken, free—crowded upon me, filling my eyes and ears. With a swift tremor of physical fear I huddled back in my seat. After eight months I was afraid of this thing!

And “Inside” I had thought I realized the whole of the cruel numbness. Slowly I had felt it closing in about me, closing down upon me, shutting me in with them—with terrors and anguish, with human souls that at any moment a hand might reach in to toss—where?

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