

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. If people bring so much courage to the world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.

We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone.

“That night at the hotel, in our room with the long empty hall outside and our shoes outside the door, a thick carpet on the floor of the room, outside the windows the rain falling and in the room light and pleasant and cheerful, then the light out and it exciting with smooth sheets and the bed comfortable, feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away all other things were unreal.
