J.
Monday. 3.15 A.M.
Sarah, I feel like Guido Reni (if it was Guido Reni) when he stabbed his servant to get the actual agony for the "Ecce Homo!" My girl fainted away in the middle of her big speech an hour ago. I have tucked her up in bed after a rub and a cup of hot milk and she is to sleep until noon. Brother's brother tried pitifully, but he didn't get through a single speech without prompting. I'm terrified! Suppose they muddle it utterly, what will the Powers say to me—after not telling them of the change in cast? I wish I hadn't asked Michael Daragh to come to the matinée. I must stop. I know I won't sleep a wink, but I'll put out the light and lie down and shut my eyes.
Jane.
Monday Midnight.
Oh, Sally dearest, I don't know where to begin! I'll make myself start with the morning. I slipped out before my starveling was awake, leaving a cheering note for her. I took the bus up to Grant's Tomb and walked back along the river to Seventy-second Street. It was the most marvelous blue-and-gold morning; I speeded myself to a glow on shady paths or sat steeping for a moment in the sun. I held happy converse with democratic dogs and reserved and haughty babies and dawdled, but even so I found myself with a panicky margin of time on my hands. Then I bethought myself of my never-failing remedy for troublesome thoughts and I went joyously forth like a he-goat on the mountains and bought a ruinous pair of proud shoes and put them on. I knew the gloating over them would leave me small room for forebodings. You know how I've always been. You used to call me "Goody Two-Shoes." These are cunningly contrived to make my No. 4, triple A, look like a 2, and I walked upon air, narrowly missing being mown down by traffic, my eyes upon my feet. On the way to the Palace I made myself repeat that lovely thing of Gelett Burgess's—
"My feet, they haul me round the house;
They hoist me up the stairs;
I only have to steer them, and
They ride me everywheres!"