Bertha is making a most fiendish noise, there were two raids last night,--and she began at six this morning--one gets little sleep. I have a one horse Victoria now, driven by Methusala; I picked Maurice up at the Ritz this evening at nine o'clock--there was not a human soul to be seen in the _Rue de la Paix_, or the _Place Vendôme_, or the _Rue Castiglione_--a city of the dead--And the early June sky full of peace and soft light. What does it all mean? IV Maurice brought Miss Sharp to-day to interview me. I do not like her much, but the exhibition she gave me of her speed and accuracy in short-hand satisfied me and made me see that I should be a fool to look further. So I have engaged her. She is a small creature, palish with rather good bright brown hair--She wears horn rimmed spectacles with yellow glasses in them so I can't see her eyes at all. I judge people by their eyes. Her hands look as if she had done rather a lot of hard work--they are so very thin. Her clothes are neat but shabby--that is not the last look like French women have--but as if they had been turned to "make do"--I suppose she is very poor. Her manner is icily quiet. She only speaks when she is spoken to. She is quite uninteresting. It is better for me to have a nonentity--then I can talk aloud my thoughts without restriction. I am to give her double what she is getting now--2000 francs a month--war price. Some colour came into her cheeks when I offered that and she hesitated, I said "Don't you think it is enough?" She answered so queerly. "I think it is too much, and I was wondering if I would be able to accept it. I want to." "Then do." "Very well--I will of course do my very best to earn it"--and with that she bowed and left me. Anyhow she won't make a noise. Nina writes since she has married Jim--which she did just before the offensive in March--she has been too happy--or too anxious, to remember her friends--even dear old ones--but now fortunately Jim is wounded in the ankle bone which will keep him at home for two months so she has a little leisure. "You can't think, Nicholas, what a different aspect the whole war took on when I knew Jim was in the front line--I adore him--and up to now I have managed to keep him adoring me--but I can see I'll have to be careful if he is going to be with me long at a time." So it would seem that Nina had not obtained the rest and security she hoped for. I hope my writing a book will rest me. I have arranged all my first chapter in my head--and to-morrow I begin.