A Heroin Heroine a
that want to wallow in action that need three meals
a day. I hardly ever talk—words seem such waste,
and they are none of them true. No one has yet in-
vented a language from my point of view. Human
life or heroin life? I’ve tried them both; and I don’t
regret having chosen as I did.”
I said something about heroin shortening life. A
wan smile flickered on her hollow cheeks. There was
something appalling in its wintry splendour. It
silenced us.
She looked down at her hands. I noticed for the
first time with extreme surprise that they were extra-
ordinarily dirty. She explained her smile.
“ Of course, if you count time by years, you're very
likely right. But what have the calculations of
astronomers to do with the life of the soul? Before
I started heroin, year followed year, and nothing worth
while happened. It was like a child scribbling in a
ledger. Now that I’ve got into the heroin life, a minute
or an hour—TI don’t know which and I don’t care—
contains more real life than any five years’ period in
my unregenerate days. You talk of death. Why
shouldn’t you? It’s perfectly all right for you. You
animals have got to die, and you know it. But I am
very far from sure that I shall ever die; and I’m as
indifferent to the idea as I am to any other of your
monkey ideas.”
She relapsed into silence, leaned back and closed her
eyes once more.
I make no claim to be a philosopher of any kind;
but it was quite evident to the most ordinary common
sense that her position was unassailable if any one
chose to take it. As G. K. Chesterton says, ‘ You
cannot argue with the choice of the soul.”
It has often been argued, in fact, that mankind lost
the happiness characteristic of his fellow-animals when
he acquired self-consciousness. This is in fact the
meaning of the legend of “The Fall.” We have
become as gods, knowing good and evil, and the
D.D.F. F