How could he have rejected so hopeful a subject?
For months he had been living in this way; endless circling, perpetual beginning, followed by frustration.

A sign of exhaustion, it of course made exhaustion more complete.

At times he was on the border-land of imbecility; his mind looked into a cloudy chaos, a shapeless whirl of nothings.

He talked aloud to himself, not knowing that he did so.

Little phrases which indicated dolorously the subject of his preoccupation often escaped him in the street: 'What could I make of that, now ?' 'Well, suppose I made him-- ?' 'But no, that wouldn't do,' and so on.
It had happened that he caught the eye of some one passing fixed in surprise upon him; so young a man to be talking to himself in evident distress! The expected crisis came, even now that he was savagely determined to go on at any cost, to write, let the result be what it would.