heir feelings for me, as long as their table manners
are good, and they make a semblance of adoring me. If one had to depend
upon their real disinterested love for their kindness to one, then it
would be a different matter, and very distressing, but since they can
always be caught by a bauble--you and I are fortunately placed,
Nicholas."

We laughed our vile laughs together.--It is true--I hate to hear my own
laugh. I agree with Chesterfield, who said that no gentleman should make
that noise!

* * * * *

As I said before, all sorts of people come to see me, but I seem to be
stripping them of externals all the time. What is the good in them? What
is the truth in them? Strip me--if I were not rich what would anyone
bother with me for? Is anyone worth while underneath?

One or other of the fluffies come almost daily to play bridge with me,
and any fellow who is on leave, and the neutrals who have no anxieties,
what a crew! It amuses me to "strip" them. The married one, Coralie, has
absolutely nothing to charm with if one removes the ambience of success,
the entourage of beautiful things, the manicurist and the complexion
specialist, the Reboux hats, and the Chanel clothes. She would be a
plain little creature, with not too fine ankles,--but that
self-confidence which material possessions bring, casts a spell over
people.--Coralie _is_ attractive. Odette, the widow, is beautiful. She
has the brain of a turkey, but she, too, is exquisitely dressed and
surrounded with everything to enhance her loveliness, and the serenity
of success has given her magnetism. She announces platitudes as
discoveries, she sparkles, and is so ravishing that one finds her trash
wit. She thinks she is witty, and you begin to believe it!

Odette can be best stripped, people could like her just for her looks.
Alice, the divorcee, appeals to one.--She is gentle and feminine and
clinging--she is the cruelest and most merciless of the three, Maurice
tells me, and the most difficult to analyse: But most of one's friends
would find it hard to stand the test of denuding them of their worldly
possessions and outside allurements, it is not only the fluffies, who
would come out of not much value!

Oh! the long, long days--and the ugly nights!

One does not sleep very well now, the noise of "Bertha" from six A.M.
and the raids at night!--but I believe I grow to like the raids--and
last night we had a marvelous experience.