30 October 1916 – 5 November 1916

E---- has had a set-back and is in bed again. However sclerotic my nerve tissue, I feel as flaccid as a jelly. My God! how I loathe the prospect of death.

I must have some music or I shall hear the paralysis creeping. That is why I lie in bed and whistle. "My dear Brown, what am I to do?" (I like to dramatise myself like that--it is an anodyne). I feel as if I were living alone on Ascension Island with the tide coming up continuously, up and up and up.