How the war drags on--! Will it really finish this year after
all--people are very depressed these last days--I do not write of any of
this in my journal--others will chronicle every shade--When I let myself
think of it I grow too wild. I become feverish with longing to be up and
with the old regiment--When I read of their deeds--then I grow
rebellious.
* * * * *
Monday: No news--yet--It is unbearable--Burton returned from Auteuil with no
clue whatsoever--except that the concierge at the Hotel de Courville
had never heard of the name of Sharp! That proves to me that "Sharp" is
not Alathea's name at all. He was a newcomer--and there were so many
young ladies who came and went to see Madame la Duchesse that he could
not identify anyone in particular by description.
Nina turned up early on Saturday in time for lunch--She was looking
ravishing in entirely new clothes--like Suzette, she has found that the
"geste" is altering--Germans may be attacking Paris--Friends and
relations may be dying in heaps, but women must have new clothes and
fashion must have her say as to their shapes--And what a mercy it is so!
If there was nothing to relieve war and seriousness--all the nations
would be raving lunatics by now.
"Jim will be crazy about you, Nina, when he sees you in that hat!"
"Yes, won't he! I put it on to make you crazy now!"
"Of course I always am!"
"No, Nicholas--you were once--but you are altered, some quite new
influence has come into your life--you don't say half such horrid
things."
We lunched in the restaurant. Some of the Supreme War Council were about
at the different tables, and we exchanged a few words--Nina preferred it
to my sitting-room.
"Englishmen do look attractive in uniform, Nicholas, don't they," she
said--. "I wonder if I had seen Jim in ordinary things if I would have
been so drawn to him?"
"Who knows? Do you remember how sensible you were about him and
Rochester!--it is splendid that it has turned out so well."
" ... Where is happiness, Nicholas?" and her eyes became dreamy,--"I
have a well balanced nature, and am grateful for what has been given me
in Jim, but I can't pretend that I have found perfect content--because
some part of me is always hungry--. I believe really that you were the
only person who could have fulfilled all I wanted in a man!"
"Nina, you had not the least feeling for me when you first saw me after
I was wounded, do you remember you felt like a sister--a mother--and a
family friend!"