“Bab! Do you dare?”
I said yes, I dared, but that I would like a glass of water. I seemed to be thirsty all the time. So she got it, and I recovered my savoir fair, and stopped shaking.
I suppose Jane expected to go along, but I refrained from asking her. She then said:
“Try to remember everything he says, Bab. I am just crazy about it.”
Ah, dear Dairy, how can I write how I felt when being led to him. The entire seen is engraved on my Soul. I, with my very heart in my eyes, in spite of my eforts to seem cool and collected. He, in front of his mirror, drawing in the lines of starvation around his mouth for the next seen, while on his poor feet a valet put the raged shoes of Act II!
He rose when I entered, and took me by the hand.
He did not seem to mind the valet, whom he treated like a chair or table. And he held my hand and looked deep into my eyes.
Ah, dear Dairy, Men may come and Men may go in my life, but never again will I know such ecstacy as at that moment.
“Sit down,” he said. “Little Lady of the rose—but it’s violets today, isn’t it? And so you like the Play?”