April 6.--I suppose it is only because I am nervous, and because the doctor told me I must not live so much by myself, but I am beginning to think again about Clare, and I had not thought of her for a long time. When one has lived with a woman, in the same house with her, every day and every night for three years: think, there are one thousand and ninety-five days in three years! well, something remains, in the very look and touch of the furniture, in the treacherous blank of the mirrors, which forget nothing, and hide so much, something that will never wholly go; and I must not expect to release my senses, as I have released my mind and my will, from the power of that woman. Only, the less I think about her the better; and there is no danger of my wanting her back again. That would be singularly inconvenient, if, as I can but suppose, she is perfectly happy with that ordinary person whom she had the curious taste to prefer to me. One must guard against being ridiculous, even when one is alone with oneself, and I am content to seem no hero to this serviceable valet, my journal; but it is partly the incapacity of good taste in them that makes women so intolerable. There are men of whom I have said to myself: Now, if Clare fell in love with this man, or that man, it would seem to me so natural, so legitimate; I could almost despise her for not submitting to a fascination which is insensitive not to feel. But a poseur, a fop, a cad; one of those men whom every man sees through at the first hand-shake; a sleek flatterer, whose compliments are vulgarities; the shopman air of 'inquire within upon everything'; yes, that is the man who takes his choice of women. Is vulgarity a curable thing? and will the vulgarity of women ever be cultured out of them? I once tried to believe that there are women and women; but I have never found that the 'and' meant anything essential. * * * * *