I am writing this before breakfast. I haven't seen Dolly alone again since the kitchen-garden. I don't know how she contrived to appease Mrs. Barnes and explain her long absence, but that she did contrive it was evident from the harmonious picture I beheld when, half an hour later, I too went back to the house. They were sitting together in the sun just outside the front door knitting. Mrs. Barnes's face was quite contented. Dolly looked specially radiant. I believe she is made up entirely of love and laughter—dangerous, endearing ingredients! We just looked at each other as I came out of the house. It is the most comforting, the warmest thing, this unexpected finding of a completely understanding friend.
September 10th.
Once you have achieved complete understanding with anybody it isn't necessary, I know, to talk much. I have been told this by the wise. They have said mere knowledge that the understanding is there is enough. They have said that perfect understanding needs no expression, that the perfect intercourse is without words. That may be; but I want to talk. Not excessively, but sometimes. Speech does add grace and satisfaction to friendship. It may not be necessary, but it is very agreeable.
As far as I can see I am never, except by the rarest chance, going to get an opportunity of talking to Dolly alone. And there are so many things I want to ask her. Were her experiences all pleasant? Or is it her gay, indomitable spirit that has left her, after them, so entirely unmarked? Anyhow the last five years can't possibly have been pleasant, and yet they've not left the shadow of a stain on her serenity. I feel that she would think very sanely about anything her bright mind touched. There is something disinfecting about Dolly. I believe she would disinfect me of the last dregs of morbidness I still may have lurking inside me.
She and Mrs. Barnes are utterly poor. When the war began Dolly was in Germany, she told me that morning in the kitchen-garden, and had been a widow nearly a year. Not Siegfried's widow: Juchs's. I find her widowhoods confusing.
'Didn't you ever have a child, Dolly?' I asked.
'No,' she said.
'Then how is it you twitched the handkerchief off your sister's sleeping face that first day and said Peep bo to her so professionally?'
'I used to do that to Siegfried. We were both quite young to begin with, and played silly games.'
'I see,' I said. 'Go on.'