When George had gone, I said to myself--"All man in mind"--yes I am sure she is--"All woman in body"--Certainly that--"All child in soul"--I want to know about her soul--if we have souls, as Nina says--by the way, I will send a messenger into the Ritz with a note to ask Nina to spend the day with me to-morrow. We have got accustomed to the impossible difficulty of telephoning to Paris, and waiting hours for telegrams--a messenger is the quickest in the end. How the war drags on--! Will it really finish this year after all--people are very depressed these last days--I do not write of any of this in my journal--others will chronicle every shade--When I let myself think of it I grow too wild. I become feverish with longing to be up and with the old regiment--When I read of their deeds--then I grow rebellious. * * * * * _Monday:_ No news--yet--It is unbearable--Burton returned from Auteuil with no clue whatsoever--except that the _concierge_ at the Hotel de Courville had never heard of the name of Sharp! That proves to me that "Sharp" is not Alathea's name at all. He was a newcomer--and there were so many young ladies who came and went to see Madame la Duchesse that he could not identify anyone in particular by description. Nina turned up early on Saturday in time for lunch--She was looking ravishing in entirely new clothes--like Suzette, she has found that the "_geste_" is altering--Germans may be attacking Paris--Friends and relations may be dying in heaps, but women must have new clothes and fashion must have her say as to their shapes--And what a mercy it is so! If there was nothing to relieve war and seriousness--all the nations would be raving lunatics by now. "Jim will be crazy about you, Nina, when he sees you in that hat!" "Yes, won't he! I put it on to make you crazy now!" "Of course I always am!" "No, Nicholas--you were once--but you are altered, some quite new influence has come into your life--you don't say half such horrid things." We lunched in the restaurant. Some of the Supreme War Council were about at the different tables, and we exchanged a few words--Nina preferred it to my sitting-room. "Englishmen do look attractive in uniform, Nicholas, don't they," she said--. "I wonder if I had seen Jim in ordinary things if I would have been so drawn to him?" "Who knows? Do you remember how sensible you were about him and Rochester!--it is splendid that it has turned out so well." " ... Where is happiness, Nicholas?" and her eyes became dreamy,--"I have a well balanced nature, and am grateful for what has been given me in Jim, but I can't pretend that I have found perfect content--because some part of me is always hungry--. I believe really that you were the only person who could have fulfilled all I wanted in a man!" "Nina, you had not the least feeling for me when you first saw me after I was wounded, do you remember you felt like a sister--a mother--and a family friend!"