September 3.
Florence is here and I have taken her into my confidence, not from choice, but because it seemed necessary. I am sure she loves me just as well as before, but she says it is wrong, all wrong. That I am making the greatest mistake of my life; that no man is worthy of the sacrifice, and that in time, even though he is true now, he will weary of me. Ugh! “She made me to shudder and grow sick at heart.” But I do not believe it. Is he not my “Roumald,” I his “Clarimonde”? How many times he has said, “To know you is to know all women.” And that satiety itself I set on fire.