What did he mean by that? I did my best not to understand. Perhaps he wanted me to protest. But that would only have sunk us deeper into the bog. He is one of those shy people who cannot endure silences and who think they must fill them by being exaggeratedly forthcoming--the people who say to you afterwards, “I have always been open with you.” The deuce they have! But the important thing is not so much to be open oneself as to allow the other person to be so. He ought to have realized that his openness was the very thing that prevented mine. But if I cannot be a friend of his, at any rate I think he will make Laura an excellent husband; for in reality what I am reproaching him with are his qualities. We went on to talk of Cambridge, where I have promised to pay them a visit. What absurd need had Laura to talk to him about me? What an admirable thing in women is their need for devotion! The man they love is as a rule a kind of clothes-peg on which to hang their love. How easily and sincerely Laura has effected the transposition! I understand that she should marry Douviers; I was one of the first to advise it. But I had the right to hope for a little grief. Some reviews of my book to hand. The qualities which people are the most willing to grant me are just the very ones I most detest. Was I right to republish this old stuff? It responds to nothing that I care for at present. But it is only at present that I see it does not. I don’t so much think that I have actually changed, as that I am only just beginning to be aware of myself. Up till now I did not know who I was. Is it possible that I am always in need of another being to act as a plate-developer? This book of mine had crystallized according to Laura; and that is why I will not allow it to be my present portrait. An insight, composed of sympathy, which would enable us to be in advance of the seasons--is this denied us? What are the problems which will exercise the minds of to-morrow? It is for them that I desire to write. To provide food for curiosities still unformed, to satisfy requirements not yet defined, so that the child of to-day may be astonished to-morrow to find me in his path. How glad I am to feel in Olivier so much curiosity, so much impatient want of satisfaction with the past.... I sometimes think that poetry is the only thing that interests him. And I feel as I re-read our poets through his eyes, how few there are who have let themselves be guided by a feeling for art rather than by their hearts or minds. The odd thing is that when Oscar Molinier showed me some of Olivier’s verses, I advised the boy to let himself be guided by the words rather than force them into submission. And now it seems to me that it is I who am learning it from him. How depressingly, tiresomely and ridiculously sensible everything that I have hitherto written seems to be to-day!