August 1920

I cough and cough, and at each breath a dragging, boiling, bubbling sound is heard. I feel that my whole chest is boiling. I sip water, spit, sip, spit. I feel I must break my heart. And I can't expand my chest; it's as though the chest had collapsed. . . . Life is — getting a new breath. Nothing else counts. " Can't you help me ? Can't you ? " But even while she asked him she smiled as if it didn't matter so much whether he could or couldn't. My nature . . . my nerves . . . the question is whether I shall change or not. Per-sonally. . . . You see him ? And he has a friend, a confidant, an old schoolfellow, small, shabby, with a wooden leg, whom he has re-dis- covered. He's married. The friend enters the new menage. Little by little he gets to know the wife. No tragedy. He feels like a one-legged sparrow. Talking together in the house before she comes in. " Is that you, Beaty? Can we have some tea? " Let the sparrow — let the sparrow — suffer the sparrow to. . . . Charades. Roger of course commits suicide, cuts his throat with a paper knife and gurgles his life away.