* * * * *
Saturday Night:
To-day has been one of utter disaster and it began fairly well. Miss
Sharp turned up at eleven as I shut my journal. I had sent to the
station to meet her this time--She brought all the work she had taken
away with her on Thursday, quite in order--and her face wore the usual
mask. I wonder if I had not ever seen her without her glasses if I
should have realized now that she is very pretty--I can see her
prettiness even with them on--her nose is so exquisitely fine, and the
mouth a Cupid's bow really--if one can imagine a Cupid's bow very firm.
I am sure if she were dressed as Odette, or Alice, or Coralie, she would
be lovely. This morning when she first came I began thinking of this and
of how I should like to give her better things than any of the fluffies
have ever had--how I would like her to have some sapphire bangles for
those little wrists and a great string of pearls round that little
throat--my mother's pearls--and perhaps big pearls in those shell
ears--And how I would like to take her hair down and brush it out, and
let it curl as it wanted to--and then bury my face in it--those stiff
twists must take heaps of hair to make.--But why am I writing all this
when the reality is further off than ever, and indeed has become an
impossibility I fear.
We worked in the sitting-room--it was a cloudy day--and presently, after
I had been dreaming on in this way, I asked her to read over the
earlier chapters of the book.--She did--.
"Now what do you think of the thing as a whole?" I asked her.
She was silent for a moment as though trying not to have to answer
directly, then that weird constitutional honesty seemed to force out the
words.
"It perhaps tells what that furniture is."
"You feel it is awful rot?"
"No--."
"What then?"
"It depends if you mean to publish it?"
I leaned back and laughed--bitterly! the realization that she understood
so completely that it was only a "soulagement"--an "asperine" for me,
so to speak as the Duchesse said--cut in like a knife. I had the
exasperated feeling that I was just being pandered to, humored by
everyone, because I was wounded. I was an object of pity, and even my
paid typist--but I can't write about it.
Miss Sharp started from her chair, her fine nostrils were quivering, and
her mouth had an expression I could not place.