Short Commons 145
It didn’t come off.
We had a wonderful dinner; and then a horrible
thing happened, the most horrible thing in my life.
Cockie wanted to go to a show! You might have hit
me on the head with a poker. I don’t attract him any
more; and I love him so much!
He went to the box office to see about tickets, and
while he was gone—this was the really horrible thing—
I found I was simply telling myself ‘I love him so
much.”
Love is dead. And yet that’s not true. I do love
him with all my heart and soul; and yet, somehow, I
can’t. I want to be able to love until I get back. Oh,
what’s the good of talking about it!
I know I love him, and yet I know I can’t love any
one. ,
I took a whole lot of cocaine. It dulled what I felt.
I was able to fancy I loved him.
We went to the show. It was awfully stupid. I was
thinking all the time how I wanted to love, and how
I wanted dope, and how I wanted to stop dope so that.
the dope might do me some good.
I couldn’t really feel. It was a dull, blind sense of
discomfort. I was awfully nervous, too. I felt as if
I were somehow caught in a trap; as if I had got
into the wrong house by mistake and couldn’t get out
again. I didn’t know what might be behind all those
doors ; and I was quite alone. Cockie was there; but
he couldn’t do a thing to help me. I couldn’t call to
him. The link between us was broken.
_ And yet apart from all the fear I had for myself,
there was an even deeper fear on his account. There
is something in me that loves him, something deeper
than life; but it won’t talk to me.
I sat through the show like being in a nightmare.
I was clinging desperately to him; and he didn’t
seem to understand me and my need. We were
strangers.
I think he was feeling rather good. He talked in a