Man and Maid

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.