FROM "THE ROMANTIC WOMAN"[1]
By Mary Borden
Now that I've got back to the beginning, the night of the 10th of September, 1913, I find that I've told you all sorts of things, almost everything of importance, except just what happened that night. I'm afraid, in telling the story, I've got into rather a muddle. It's so difficult to keep distinct what I felt and knew at various times, and what I feel and know now. Now the war is on us, and my chief feeling is one of fear, not any definite fear of Zeppelins or invasions, but a vague, dreadful fear, an acute sense of insecurity. The world is shaking, and its convulsions give one a feeling of having, to put it vulgarly, gone dotty. It's as though I saw all the tables and chairs in my room moving about and falling over. Everything that was stable and was made to hang on to, and sit down upon, and lean against, is lurching. The great business of life seems to be to sit tight, but one has a suspicion that even the law of gravity may be loosed and that we shall find ourselves falling off the earth. Before the 4th of August, people in their secure little houses were enjoying their miseries and making capital out of their difficulties, and splendidly gambling on the future the dark future—that seemed so possible. Now it is all changed. It appears that the conduct of life is largely a matter of unconscious calculations. One says good-bye and calculates that the chances are a hundred to one, that one will meet this friend again. But when I said good-bye to Binky the other day at the one o'clock from Victoria, the chances were a hundred to one against his coming back. It's
- ↑ See Bibliography.
71
