Directly the war began she packed up and came to Switzerland; she didn't
wish, under such circumstances, to risk pleasing any more Germans.
Since her marriage to Juchs all her English relations except Kitty had
cast her off, so that only a neutral country was open to her, and Kitty
instantly gave up everybody and everything to come and be with her. At
first her little income was sent to her by her German bank, but after
the first few months it sent no more, and she became entirely dependent
on Kitty. All that Kitty had was what she got from selling her house.
The Germans, Dolly said, would send no money out of the country. Though
the war was over she could get nothing out of them unless she went back.
She would never go back. It would kill Kitty; and she too, she thought,
would very likely die. Her career of pleasing Germans does seem to be
definitely over.
'So you see,' she said smiling, 'how wonderful it is for us to have
found _you_.'
'What I can't get over,' I said, 'is having found _you_.'
But I wish, having found her, I might sometimes talk to her.
_September 12th._
We live here in an atmosphere of _combats de générosité_. It is
tremendous. Mrs. Barnes and I are always doing things we don't want to
do because we suppose it is what is going to make the other one happy.
The tyranny of unselfishness! I can hardly breathe.
_September 19th._
I think it isn't good for women to be shut up too long alone together
without a man. They seem to fester. Even the noblest. Taking our
intentions all round they really are quite noble. We do only want to
develope in ideal directions, and remove what we think are the obstacles
to this development in each other's paths; and yet we fester. Not Dolly.
Nothing ever smudges her equable, clear wholesomeness; but there are
moments when I feel as if Mrs. Barnes and I got much mixed up together
in a sort of sticky mass. Faint struggles from time to time, brief
efforts at extrication, show there is still a life in me that is not
flawlessly benevolent, but I repent of them as soon as made because of
the pain and surprise that instantly appear in Mrs. Barnes's tired,
pathetic eyes, and hastily I engulf myself once more in goodness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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