Everything has gone downhill so rapidly. For a long time I lived an ordered existence; exercised my prerogatives, told the therapist what he wanted to know, consorted with the females, banked time against our release. I was not happy but I was content. Now I know how fragile is the edge on which I poised; how ready I was for disaster. It was Plotar who brought this to pass but I am con­vinced that if it had not been Plotar it would have been something else. Anything else. Whatever else. After two years and four months I can no longer bear the enclosure nor can it bear me. What part do the captors play in this? I am not sure.

If I had not met Plotar, I somehow would have become in­volved with Nala and it would have turned out this way anyway. No matter how many paths, all of them converge into this weary, stately, dangerous tread which I am now taking toward confron­tation. I must believe this. I must believe in inevitability. I must believe that what has happened would have happened in any case.

For if not—if it were the coincidence of Plotar, catastrophe of confrontation, incision of confession to the therapist—if it were these and only these events which destroyed my confidence in the life I had created . . . if this indeed is true then I do not think that I could bear it and would truly go insane.