I HAVE said that I am alone.
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.
I have named my friend the "anemone lady," a name beautifully appropriate.
The anemone lady used to teach me literature in the Butte High School. She used to read poetry in the class-room in a clear, sweet voice that made one wish one might sit there forever and listen to it.
But now I have left the high school, and the dear anemone lady has gone from Butte. Before she went she told me she would be my friend.
Think of it—to live and have a friend!
My friend does not fully understand me; she thinks much too well of me. She has not a correct idea of my soul's depths and shallows. But if she did know them she would still be my friend. She knows the heavy weight of my unrest and unhappiness. She is tenderly sympathetic. She is the one in all the world who is dear to me.
Often I think, if only I could have my anemone lady and go and live with her in some little out-of-the-world place high up on the side of a mountain for the rest of my life—what more would I desire? My friendship would constitute my life. The unrest, the dreariness, the Nothingness of my existence now is so dull and gray by contrast that there would be Happiness for me in that life, Happiness softly radiant, if quiet—redolent of the fresh, thin fragrance of the dear blue anemone that grows in the winds and rains of spring.
But Miss Corbin would doubtless look somewhat askance at the idea of spending the rest of her life with me on a mountain. She is very fond of me, but her feeling for me is not like mine for her, which indeed is natural. And her life is made up mostly of sacrifices—doing for her fellow-creatures, giving of herself. She never would leave this.
And so, then, the mountainside and the solitude and the friend with me are, like every good thing, but a vision.
"Thy friend is always thy friend; not to have, nor to hold, nor to love, nor to rejoice in: but to remember."
And so do I remember my one friend, the anemone lady—and think often about her with passionate love.