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[Page 21]
Yarned with Sgt. F. the whole evening.
We found a cool spot in a corridor just between the cold storage chamber and the butcher's shop, with the fresh night air coming over our heads. He is a very interesting fellow. He is a braggart, has been in delirium tremens for three days last week, but is outstandingly good-natured and without any pettiness. He resolutely leaves drink alone (except when these rare bouts take place) he tells me. He has a big element of honesty about him that has given me the incentive to come to grips with him---and strange thing of all he is attracted to me. It is he who sought me out, making me his confidant, not of things, but the confidant or the onlooker of his "life". Making me see some part of the curious make up that is to him a soul.
Like most men in the ruck of life at anyrate, he is a roué, but as he says, he has never robbed any girl, he has only taken what, in some form or other, was offered him. I believe him, though I do not agree with his philosophy. I recognise that he is a man with a personality and with instincts, and social position (he is in fair circumstances) not only lead him into adventures that yield sensual luxury but that lead many girls of good social position toward him with impulses that are keyed to his and whose happiness and pleasure seem to flow like some tributary into the great channel of his pleasure. He has the magnetism---I have seen other men like him. It is queer and perhaps it is very cruel. He is much older than I---8 or 9 years---and that's a lot between young men. He is afraid to die he says and yet he has