And so I go on, round and round like a squirrel in a cage. I wonder if
the squirrel ever feels as I do.
They come in to see me and say I look ill. Roger is particularly
solicitous, wants me to go south for a month with Mrs. Ashworth. I
could no more leave this place, and the spectacle of his infatuation,
than I could tell him what is making me hollow-eyed and wan.
One of the bitterest of my thoughts is that I know--an instinct tells
me--he is really still fondest of me. I am and always will be the
better woman for him, the one that in the storm and stress of a life’s
companionship, is his true mate. His feeling for Lizzie is a temporary
aberration. He has been bewitched--La Belle Dame Sans Merci has him in
thrall. Some day he will wake from the dream--and then? He will find
Lizzie beside him, La Belle Dame Sans Merci directing the domestic
régime, tactfully accommodating herself to his moods, taking the place
of the undistinguished wife of a distinguished husband.
Oh--why do I write like this! It’s low, contemptible, vile. I’m going
to stop. I’m going to bow my head and say it’s done and give up.
I wrote that two days ago, pressed the blotter over it and said to
myself, “The squirrel has had enough. It’s going to lie down in its
cage.”
To-night--it’s past midnight and a big moon is shining on the back
walls--I begin with a new pen on a fresh sheet to show how the squirrel
didn’t stop. Poor ridiculous, demented squirrel!
There is a sort of grotesque humor about it, I can stand off and laugh
at myself.
This afternoon the count came in to see me with news. His people have
sent for him to go back to Rome.
“Have you already learned the banking business as conducted in
America?” I inquired. I’m not so sympathetic as I used to be but the
count doesn’t seem to notice it.
He took a cigarette and answered with deliberation:
“I have now, for four months, pasted letters in a book. It seems that I
am to go on forever pasting letters in a book. I wrote it to my father
and he sends me an answer saying, ‘My son, you can paste letters in a
book as well in Rome as in New York. Come back at once. I find this
pasting too expensive!’”