We played Ludo together this evening and she won 2s. 6d. Handsomely gowned in black and wearing black ornaments, she sat with me in the lamplight on the sofa in the Morris Room, with the Ludo board between us placed on a large green cushion. Her face was white as parchment and her hair seemed an ebony black. I lolled in the opposite corner, a thin, elongated youth, with fair hair all stivvered up, dressed in a light-brown lounge suit with a good trouser crease, a soft linen collar and—a red tie! Between us, on its green cushion the Ludo board with its brilliantly coloured squares:—all of it set before a background formed by the straight-backed, rectangular, settle-like sofa, with a charming covering which went with the rest of the scheme.
"Rather decorative,"—— remarked in an audible voice, turning her head on one side and quizzing. I can well believe it was. She looked wholly admirable.
November 21.
My Nightmare
Can't get rid of my cough. I have so many things to do—I am living in a fever of haste to get them done. Yet this cough hinders me. There is always something which drags me back from the achievement of my desires. It's like a nightmare; I see myself struggling violently to escape from a monster which draws continuously nearer, until his shadow falls across my path, when I begin to run and find my legs tied, etc. The only difference is that mine is a nightmare from which I never wake up. The haven of successful accomplishment remains as far off as ever. Oh! make haste.
November 29.
The English Review has returned my Essay!—This is a keen disappointment to me. "I wish I could use this, but I am really too full," the Editor writes. To be faintly encouraged and delicately rejected—why I prefer the printed form.
December 1.
More Irony
Renewed my cold—I do nothing all day but blow my nose, cough, and curse Austin Harrison.