How terribly I am craving now for some one who shall tell me—and tell me incessantly—that I am good-looking and clever and original in mind, that I dress nicely and move gracefully.
For though at this moment I am quite satisfied that none of these things are so: yet, if I were told so this day, I should at once believe it to be true.
I am in pain. At times I feel a special need of saying all that I think. At times it is so hard to wear a mask.... And I want some sympathy....
I was at the Wildenhoff’s to-day, and had a talk with Witold. I cannot conceive how it came about, but on a sudden I found I was saying too much—or rather, speaking too much to the point.
Finding the position I had taken up was too advanced and too much exposed, I decided to beat a retreat.
“But can you conceive in what the tragedy of my life consists in reality?” I asked.
On which, in mute questioning, he raised his beautiful mournful eyes to mine.
“In that all I have told you is untrue ... and all I have not told you is untrue likewise. It is my style to talk of my sadness one day, and the next to tell of my life’s cloudless philosophy.”
“And to whom of all men do you tell the truth? To Wiazewski? I don’t know. Perhaps to no one. When I have taken off, one after another, all the styles I wear, there is nothing more left of me.”
At this juncture, Mme. Wildenhoff, dressed in a very low-cut black velvet gown, came up to us.