I am not quite, quite alone.
I have one friend—of that Friendship that is real and is inlaid with the beautiful thing Truth. And because it has the beautiful thing Truth in it, this my one Friendship is somehow above and beyond me; there is something in it that I reach after in vain—for I have not that divinely beautiful thing Truth. Have I not said that I am a thief and a liar? But in this Friendship nevertheless there is a rare, ineffably sweet something that is mine. It is the one tender thing in this dull dreariness that wraps me round.
Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman?
My one friend is a woman some twelve or thirteen years older than I. She is as different from me as is day from night. She believes in God—that God that is shown in the Bible of the Christians. And she carries with her an atmosphere of gentleness and truth. The while I am ready and waiting to dedicate my life to the Devil in exchange for Happiness—or some lesser thing. But I love Fannie Corbin with a peculiar and vivid intensity, and with all the sincerity and passion that is in me. Often I think of her, as I walk over the sand in my Nothingness, all day long. The Friendship of her and me is a fair, dear benediction upon me, but there is something in it—deep within it—that eludes me. In moments when I realize this, when I strain and reach vainly at a thing beyond me, when indeed I see in my mind a vision of the personality of Fannie Corbin, it is then that it comes on me with force that I am not good.
But I can love her with all the ardor of a young and passionate heart.
Yes, I can do that.
For a year I have loved my one friend. During the eighteen years of my life before she came into it I loved no one, for there was no one.
It is an extremely hard thing to go through eighteen years with no one to love, and no one to love you—the first eighteen years.
But now I have my one friend to love and to worship.