"For a while, yes. It wasn't so until I happened to see those plants in my mother's garden. Maybe not too definite even then. I only thought: this would be one way. Then I was thinking, why not take a few, have them on hand if things got worse? Then I was actually taking them, breaking off the tops and shoving them away in the tall grass, keeping the roots."
"But I presume you must have been working up to that state of mind for quite a while?"
"Yes, I had been. It was like a progressive illness—well, I suppose that's what it really is. Each day a little emptier than the one before, a little harder to care about anything."
"You made that infusion of the roots in brandy?"
"Yes, the next day."
"Do you recall the circumstances—what part of the day it was, say?"
"It was evening, after I'd stopped trying to write that letter—the one I didn't finish, didn't mail."
"You gave up entirely on that letter, didn't you?—I mean, you decided it couldn't do any good?"
"Oh, that's true. I was imagining communication when—when in the nature of things there just couldn't be any. Jimmy—Jim Doherty and I never really—never saw each other, never heard—"