Page:The story of Mary MacLane (IA storyofmarymacla00macliala).pdf/308

 ate, "your life will be very hard for you always—harder when you are happy than when you go in Nothingness?"

"I know—I know. Nevertheless I want to be happy," I sobbed. I felt a rush of an old thick, heavy anguish. "It is day after day. It is week after week. It is month after month. It is year after year. It is only time going and going. There is no joy. There is no lightness of heart. It is only the passing of days. I am young and all alone. Always I have been alone: when I was five and lay in the damp grass and tortured myself to keep back tears; and through the long, cold, lonely years till now—and now all the torture does not keep back the tears. There is no one—nothing—to help me bear it. It is more than pathetic when one is nineteen in all young, new feeling and sees Nothing anywhere—except long, dark, lonely years behind her and before her. No one that loves me and long, long years."