Man and Maid

* * * * *

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.