drop. This provoked me, as her last remark
showed how far from stupid she is.

That nervous feeling overcame me again--Confound the woman!

"Please read," I said at last in desperation, and I closed my one eye.

She picked up a book--it happened to be a volume of de Musset--and she
read at random--her French is as perfect as her English--The last thing
I remember was "_Mimi Pinson_"--and when I awoke it was past six o'clock
and she had gone home.

I wonder how many of us, since the war, know the desolation of
waking--alone and in pain--and helpless--Of course there must be
hundreds. If I am a rotter and a coward about suffering, at all events
it does not come out in words--and perhaps it is because I am such a
mixture that I am able to write it in this journal--If I were purely
English I should not be able to let myself go even here--.

Suzette came to dinner--I thought how vulgar she looked--and that if her
hands were white they were podgy and the nails short. The three black
hairs irritated my cheek when she kissed me--I was brutal and moved my
head in irritation--.

"_Tiens?! Mon Ami!_"--she said and pouted.

"Amuse me!" I commanded--.

"So! it is not love then, Nicholas, thou desirest--Bear!"

"Not in the least--I shall never want love again probably. Divert
me!--tell me--tell me of your scheming little mouse's brain, and your
kind little heart--How is it '_dans le metier_'?"

Suzette settled herself on the sofa, curled up among the pillows like a
plump little tabby cat. She lit a cigarette--.

"Very middling," she whiffed--"Cases of love where all my good counsel
remains untaken--a madness for drugs--very foolish--A drug--yes to
try--but to continue!--_Mon Dieu!_ they will no longer make fortunes
'_dans le metier_'--"

"When you have made your fortune, Suzette, what will you do with it?"

"I shall buy that farm for my mother--I shall put Georgine into a
convent for the nobility, and arrange a large dot for her--and for
me?--I shall gamble in a controlled way at Monte Carlo--."

"You won't marry then, Suzette?"

"Marry!" she laughed a shrill laugh--"For why, Nicholas?--A tie-up to
one man, _hein_?--to what good?--and yet who can say--to be an honored
wife is the one experience I do not know yet!"--she laughed again--.

"And who is Georgine--you have not spoken of her before, Suzette?"

She reddened a little under her new terra cotta rouge.

"No?--Oh! Georgine is my little first mistake--but I ha