Then luncheon; afterwards a couple of hours in the open air, and I would again write till eight o'clock in the evening.

The world was shut out.

I moved in a dream.

The book was begun at Hot Springs, in Virginia, in the annex to the old Hot Springs Hotel.

I could not write in the hotel itself, so I went to the annex, and in the big building--in the early spring-time--I worked night and day.