Page:The story of Mary MacLane (IA storyofmarymacla00macliala).pdf/82

 hear, a Nothingness! Oh, the pity of it! the pity of it!

Do you know why it is that I look back to the horizon at the figure of an unkempt, rough child, and why I feel a surging torrent of tears and anguish and despair?

I feel more than that indeed, but I have no words to tell it.

I shall have to miss forever some beautiful, wonderful things because of that wretched, lonely childhood.

There will always be a lacking, a wanting—some dead branches that never grew leaves.

It is not deaths and murders and plots and wars that make life tragedy.

It is Nothing that makes life tragedy.

It is day after day, and year after year, and Nothing.

It is a sunburned little hand reached out and Nothing put into it.