Page:Nalkowska - Kobiety (Women).djvu/51

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Ice-Plains
39

amounts to the same as belief in nothing. It is all the same to me whether I shall cease to be after death, or be transferred to a world wherein there is no idea of being, or of any Ego, conditioning my self-consciousness. I understand, too, that a world in which Being does not contradict Non-Being, is to our minds equivalent to no world at all. So that my faith is similar to your unfaith, but inferred and formulated otherwise."

Janusz is very humble and wretched now. Sometimes, when we sit long together of an evening, he will fall asleep with his head in my lap, worn out with nervous exhaustion. And then I am face to face with something very strange.

I feel a mysterious dread of the torment of an everlasting vigil, together with a sense of responsibility beyond my strength. Yet I do not wake him, although I am shuddering with dread; I will not let him know that I am afraid! … There are certain things one should not speak about to children. … That I love solitude when alone, but that the feeling of solitude when some one is by me, fills me with unspeakable dread, for then I