The altar fire by A.C. Benson

It is months since I have opened this book; it has lain on my table all through the dreadful hours -- I write the word down conventionally, and yet it is not the right word at all, because I have merely been stunned and numbed. I simply could not suffer any more. I smiled to myself, as the man in the story, who was broken on the wheel, smiled when they struck the second and the third blow. I knew why he smiled; it was because he had dreaded it so much, and when it came there was nothing to dread, because he simply did not feel it.

To-night I just pick up idly the dropped thread. Perhaps it is a sign, this faint desire to make a little record, of the first tingling of returning life. Something stirs in me, and I will not resist it; it may be read by some one that comes after me, by some one perhaps who feels that his own grief is supreme and unique, and that no one has ever suffered so before. He may learn that there have been others in the dark valley before him, that the mist is full of pilgrims stumbling on, falling, rising again, falling again, lying stupefied in a silence which is neither endurance nor patience.