out anywhere to dinner, I wanted to be alone to think
over the whole strange turn of fate. Do strong desires influence events?
Or are all these things settled beforehand? Or is there something in
reincarnation, which Alathea believes in, and the actions of one life
cause that which looks like fate in the next? We shall have many talks
on this subject, I hope.

I wonder, how long it will take for my little love to come voluntarily
into my arms?----?

XIX

_Saturday_:

I wonder how long I shall go on writing in this Journal? I suppose once
I should be happy it would not be necessary; well the moment has not yet
come, in in spite of my being the _fiance_ of the woman I desire.

At ten o'clock I was waiting for her in the sitting-room, and I was
thinking of that other time when I waited in anxiety, in case she did
not return at all. I was very excited, but it was more the exhilaration
I used to feel when we were going to have some stunning marauding
expeditions over No-Man's Land. The old zest was in my veins.

I heard Alathea's ring, and after she had taken off her hat she came
into the room. I believed that her anxieties must be assuaged because
George Harcourt had telephoned late on Thursday night to say that he had
been successful, and that he had four thousand francs to hand back to
me, the affair having been concluded for twenty-six thousand. So what
was my surprise to see Alathea's face below her glasses more woebegone
than ever! At first it gave me a stab of pain. Does she really hate me
so? She did not mention the money, so I wonder if it is that she does
not yet know her father is cleared? I bowed as coldly as I used always
to do, and she asked me if I had a chapter ready for her to type? I
answered that I had not, because I had been too busy with other things
to have composed anything.

"I think we had better discuss the necessary arrangements for our
marriage before we can settle down to our old work," I said.

"Very well."

"I shall have to have your full name and your father's and mother's and
all that, you know, to make it legal. My lawyer will attend to all the
formalities--they are quite considerable, I believe. He arrives from
London on Monday. I got him a passport by pulling a lot of strings."

She actually trembled. It seemed as if the idea of all this had not come
to her, some of the value of her sacrifice would be diminished if the
family skeleton should be laid bare, I could see sh