s. She hopes that she will be able to
invite us to see her debut in _one year!!!_ I should never be able to
stand on a stage before a lot of strangers, I know I would never be able
to get a word out.

December 21st. Hella is awfully unlucky. The day before yesterday she
got such bad influenza and sore throat that she can't go to Cracow. She
says she is born to ill luck; this is the second Christmas that has been
spoiled, two years ago the appendicitis operation, and now this wretched
influenza. She hopes her mother will come to Vienna, but if so her
father will be left quite alone. And how on earth shall we get on,
Christmas without Mother, the first Christmas without Mother. I simply
don't dare to think of it, for if I did it would make me cry. Dora says
too that it can't be a proper Christmas without Mother. I wonder what
Father will say when he sees Mother's portrait. I do hope the frame will
be ready to-morrow. Hella is especially unhappy because she is not able
to see Lajos. Besides, she is madly in love at the same time with a
lieutenant of dragoons whom we meet every day and who is a count, and
he is madly in love with her. He knows that her father is a general, for
when her father went to kiss the Emperor's hand he took Hella part of
the way with him in the motor, and she was introduced to the lieutenant
then. So now he salutes her when they meet. He is tremendously tall and
looks fearfully aristocratic. But what annoys me with Hella is that she
_invariably_ denies it when she is in love with anyone. I always tell
her, or if she notices anything I don't deny it. What's the sense of it
between friends? for example, the year before last she was certainly
in love with the young doctor in the hospital. And in September when
we came back from Theben with that magnificent lieutenant in the flying
corps, I made no secret of the fact that I was frantically in love with
him. But she did not believe me, and said: That is not real love, when
people don't see one another for months and flirt with others between
whiles. That was aimed at Hero Siegfried. Goodness me, at him!! it's
really too absurd.

December 22nd. I am so delighted, Frau Doktor M., at least she is Frau
Professor Theyer now, has written to me. I had sent her Christmas good
wishes, and she sent a line to thank me, and at the same time she wished
me a happy New Year, _she took the lead in this_; it was heavenly. I was
frightfully annoyed because Dora said that