November 7.—She has written, and the letter has reached me here, after a little delay. She must think I am not going to write. She wants to see me, and it will perhaps be better for me to see her. She is in London; it would be kinder if I called; and heaven knows there is no danger. Her letter is full of dignity; she knows me and there are no tears in it; the regrets are duly temperate; she does not even ask to be forgiven. 'I am in trouble: you once cared for me: I have not forgotten that you can be kind: will you help me?' That is the substance of her letter. I will write to her to-night, and say that I will come and see her.
1 A.M.—Shall I never understand women? will nothing ever teach me wisdom? I was foolish enough to think that the Baroness would help me, that I could be open with her, as I have been till now. I had no secrets from her in regard to Clare, and she knows how much all that is in the past. I showed her the letter. She read it in silence, with her hand over her eyes. Then, not raising her head, she said, in a voice that seemed her ordinary voice: 'You will go and see her?' 'I think it would be best,' I said. She lifted her head suddenly, clenched the paper in her hand, and flung it on the carpet at my feet. For a moment I was too startled even to move. Her face was convulsed with rage; her face was terrible, more terrible than I have ever seen it. The scar seemed to whiten, the blood rushed to her other cheek and made her forehead purple; her eyes glowed. I stooped to pick up the letter, and began to smooth it out on my knee. I fixed my eyes on it, so as not to see her; and she knew why I did not look at her. She seemed to make a great effort to recover her self-control, and I saw her fingers clutch a fold of her skirt and clench tightly upon it. 'You want to see her?' she said, still in a low voice; and I said, what was quite the truth: 'No, I do not want to see her, I only want to help her, and I think it would be kinder, as well as more satisfactory, to go than to write.' 'I understand,' she said coldly; 'you want to see her again. I understand your feeling.' I was annoyed at her misinterpretation, and said nothing. 'You still care for her,' she said, 'I can see it, it is useless for you to deny it; you want to go back to her. Well, she is free now: go back to her.' I was going to protest, but she rose, and held up her hand to silence me. Tears were in her eyes, the anger was gone, she could hardly speak. 'Yes,' she said, 'go and see her; I will not keep you from her; if you still love her, there is nothing else to be done. I understand, I understand.' And she sank back in the chair again, with her hands over her face, weeping big tears.
When I saw her suffering, I was sorry, and I knelt down beside her and took away one of her hands from before her face, and kissed the hand still wet with tears. I assured her that Clare was nothing to me now, and I convinced her of my sincerity. She dried her eyes, smiled sadly, and said, 'Then you promise me you will not go and see her.' 'But no, I said, 'I have told you that it is best to go and see her; but you know the whole reason why I mean to do so.' She turned rigid in an instant, and I should have had to go through the whole scene over again, if I had not had the cowardice to say, 'I promise that I will not see her.' She begged me to show her the letter that I wrote. Why should I refuse?
After to-day there can be no further disguise between us. On her side everything has been said, and on mine everything has been understood. By what I have done to-day I have put myself into her hands, I have given her the right to arrange my life as she pleases; I have shown her my weakness, I have let her see her own strength. Does it matter how one gives way, or how a woman overcomes? To-day I honestly wanted to do the right thing, to be kind to a woman I had once cared for, and I am powerless to do it. These agitations, these restrictions, this sentimental ceremony, are too much for me. How is it that I did not sooner realise the way things were tending, and set a barrier, not only against this passionate foe without, but against this weakness, this kindness, that turn traitors within, and run so readily to the closed gates to open them?
November 8.—The letter I wrote was cold; it was as if one were giving charity. Clare replies gratefully, as if to a benevolent stranger. I have spoilt the idea which she still had of me. I am sorry for it; the more so as I have no desire to see her; but I should like to have behaved at least instinctively. It is for another woman, always, that one is unjust to a woman. And why is it? Is it because I pity this woman so much, that I have been unjust to the other? I did not know till yesterday how much she cared for me. What is going to happen? I ask myself, not liking, or not daring, to wait for an answer. How one evades coming to a conclusion, precisely when too much depends on that conclusion! I have never understood myself, and just now the brain in me seems to sit aside and reserve judgment, while all manner of feelings, instincts, sensations, chatter among themselves. No, I will confess nothing to these pages, and chiefly because it would take a casuist to prepare my confession.
November 9.—She loves me cruelly, with a dull passion that does not come till after youth and the years one calls the years of love are long past. I have had a terrible scene with her; terrible because, for the first time, a woman's love seems to me a wholly serious thing, and one's own feeling to matter less. My own feeling: what is it here? Shall I understand one woman, at last, when the desire to do so is over? Passions, then, are real things in women, and, if no one is responsible, at least one cannot always hold aloof from them, or go by on the other side. She loves me, and she can conceal it no longer; and she is ashamed that I should see her as she is, and she exults in her shame, and is reckless and timorous, and is at my mercy, and does not know that it is just this that holds me, and that I cannot, if I would, turn away from one now helpless, and a beggar. Something in her helplessness takes hold of me like a great force, breaks down my indifference; because, I think, it convinces me, to the roots of my mind, as no woman ever before convinced me, that what one calls love may be life itself, carrying away all the props of the world in its overflow. I am afraid of this horrible reality; but I cannot escape it.
November 10.—I try to persuade myself that I have become her lover wholly out of pity; but the more intimate self which listens is not to be persuaded. Certainly I do not love her, but is it only because she loves me, and because she is the most unfortunate of women, that ... No, there is something else, some animal attraction, which comes to me in spite of my repugnance; a gross, unmistakable desire, which I would not admit even to myself if the consciousness of it were not forced upon me. What I should not have believed in another, I experience, beyond denial, in myself.