Saturday Morning:
Yesterday I was so restless I could not settle to anything. I read pages
and pages of Plato and was conscious that the words were going over in
my head without conveying the slightest meaning, and that the other part
of my mind was absorbed with thoughts of Miss Sharp--. If I only dared
to be natural with her we surely could be friends, but I am always
obsessed with the fear that she will leave me if I transgress in the
slightest beyond the line she has marked between us--. I see that she is
determined to remain only the secretary, and I realize that it is her
breeding which makes her act as she does--. If she were familiar or
friendly with me, she would feel it was not correct to come to my flat
alone--She only comes at all because the money is so necessary to
her--and having to come, she protects her dignity by wearing this ice
mask.--I know that she was affronted by Coralie's look on Thursday, and
that is why she went home pretending the typing machine was out of
order--Now if any more of these contretemps happen she will probably
give me warning. Burton instinctively sensed this, and that is why he
disapproved of my asking her to lunch--If she had been an ordinary
typist Burton would not have objected in the least,--as I said before,
Burton knows the world!
Now what is to be done next?--I would like to go and confide in the
Duchesse, and tell her that I believe I have fallen in love with my
secretary, who won't look at me, and ask her advice--but that I fear
with all her broad-minded charity, her class prejudice is too strong to
make her really sympathetic. Her French mind of the Ancien Régime
could not contemplate a Thormonde--son of Anne de Mont-Anbin--falling in
love with an insignificant Miss Sharp who brings bandages to the
Courville hospital!
These thoughts tormented me so all yesterday that I was quite feverish
by the evening--and Burton wore an air of thorough disapproval. A rain
shower came on too, and I could not go up on the terrace for the sunset.
I would like to have taken asperines and gone to sleep, when night
came--but I resisted the temptation, telling myself that to-morrow she
would come again.
I am dawdling over this last chapter on purpose--and I have re-read the
former ones and decided to rewrite one or two, but at best I cannot
spread this out over more than six weeks, I fear, and then what excuse
can I have for keeping her? I feel that she would not stay just to
answer a few letters a day, and do the accounts and pay the bills with
Burton. I feel more desperately miserable than I have felt since last
year--And I suppose that according to her theory, I have to learn a
lesson. It seems if I search, as she said one must do without vanity,
that the lesson is to conquer emotion, and be serene when everything
which I desire is out of reach.