May 9.--I have got no further in my study of these two enigmatical people, who seem to have not one thought, not one feeling, in common, and yet who seem to live so calmly side by side, in this vast house where they need never meet except at meals, or when the presence of strangers isolates them. I am wholly unable to talk with the Baron, who ignores me with the most punctilious deference. He never enters the library, and, in the drawing-room, is never without a newspaper, of which he rarely turns the pages. With the Baroness I can always talk; I can even, what is rare with me, listen. For a woman, her ideas are surprisingly well informed: quotations, of course, but arranged with a personal sense of decoration. She can discuss general questions broadly, with a rare frankness, a kind of eager sincerity. What does the Baron think, I wonder, behind that screen of the newspaper, if, as he sits motionless, he is listening, as I cannot but believe, to every word that is said? I often look at the newspaper, hoping to see it at least quiver, if not drop to the floor, and the man leap out of his ambush. The Baroness interests me a little more every day, and this interest is oddly balanced by my equal difficulty in looking or in not looking at her. When she is talking with me she invariably arranges herself so as to be on my left; often she leans her head on her left hand, as if to shield even what remains unseen. How horribly she must suffer from this living mask, under which she is condemned to exist! How long, I wonder, has she worn it, and shall I ever know the cause? Is she always conscious of its presence, of the eyes that seek to avoid it, and return, despite themselves, stealthily? I can conceive no more exquisite torture. Or yes, there is one. Suppose this woman, in whom I can distinguish a quite unusual force and energy of emotion, were to fall in love again: she is at the age of lasting passions, and what could be more natural in her? That would be a tragedy which I hardly like to think of; the more so, as I can easily conceive how powerful must have been her attraction before the time of this accident. There is something almost magnetic in her nature, and I can see that the Kahns, for instance, are attracted by her to the point of hardly seeing her as she is, of forgetting to look at her with their own eyes. * * * * *