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 have her beautifully brought up, Nicholas--with the Holy Mother at St. Brieux. I am then her Aunt--so to speak--the wife of a small shop keeper in Paris, you must know--She adores me--and I give all I can to _St. Georges-des-Près_--. Georgine will be a lady and marry the Mayor's son--one day--." Something touched me infinitely. This queer little _demi-mondaine_ mother--her thoughts set on her child's purity, and the conventional marriage for her--in the future. Her plebeian, insolent little round face so kindly in repose. I respect Suzette far more than my friends of the world--. When she left--it was perhaps in bad taste, but I gave her a quite heavy four figure cheque. "For the education of Georgine--Suzette." She flung her arms round my neck and kissed me frankly on both cheeks, and tears were brimming over in her merry black eyes. "Thou hast after all a heart, and art after all a gentleman, Nicholas--_Va!_--"--and she ran from the room. VI