_
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.

* * * * *

_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 i