I've always been awfully quick to
notice things like that. I've often seen them. Quite recently, so
little, I believe, as a year ago, things like that, things like
this, would have moved me a lot. They somehow do not now. That
frightful ending of hers: 'You could get dozens and dozens of men
to love you, but you have taken mine and I can never, never get
another.' That is most terribly pathetic. I think that is the most
poignant thing I have ever heard. Well, I can realise its utter
pathos; I can realise it but I cannot feel it. It does not move
me. 'And I never, never can get another.' It's frightful. I could
cry. But I do not a bit want to cry. I must have somehow changed. I
am not a bit sorry if I have changed. I would be sorry to go back
and be as, if I have changed, I must have been--sentimental. I have
changed. I believe I can look back and see it. About the time I
left the Sultana's, mother's letters, and keeping them and answering
them, began to be--yes they did begin to be a little, tiny bit of
a nuisance to me. Yes, it was beginning then, this. And I expect
earlier, if I worked it out. There's nothing in it to regret. It's
just a growing out of a thing. It's not, when I see a thing that's
pathetic, that I've grown blunt or blind and can't see it for
pathetic. It's just--I know what it is--it's just that it doesn't
appeal to me in the same way. It's like seeing a dish of most tempting
food in front of you, not that I ever remember my mouth, as they
say, watering at anything; but say strawberries and cream--I'm fond
of strawberries and cream--it's like seeing a dish of strawberries
and cream in front of you, and knowing it's good and knowing it's
delicious, and knowing you're awfully fond of it--and just not
being hungry; turning away and leaving it there, not because it's
not everything that it ought to be, but just because--you don't
want it.
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