The Journal of a Disappointed Man

Curse! Left her at High Street Station and probably will never see her again. This is a second great opportunity. The first was the girl on Lundy Island. These two women I shall always regret. There must be so many delightful and interesting persons in London if only I could get at them. June 4. Rushed off to tell R---- about my little Irish girl. Her face has been "shadowing" me all day. June 6. A violent argument with R---- re marriage. He says Love means appropriation, and is taking the most elaborate precautions to forfend passion--just as if it were a militant suffragette. Every woman he meets he first puts into a long quarantine, lest perchance she carries the germ of the infectious disease. He quotes Hippolytus and talks like a mediæval ascetic. Himself, I imagine, he regards as a valuable but brittle piece of Dresden china which must be saved from rough handling and left unmolested to pursue its high and dusty destiny--an old crock as I warned him. By refusing to plunge into life he will live long and be a well preserved man, but scarcely a living man--a mummy rather. I told him so amid much laughter. "You're a reactionary," says he. "Yes, but why should a reactionary be a naughty boy?" June 7. My ironical fate lured me this evening into another discussion on marriage in which I had to take up a position exactly opposite to the one I defended yesterday against R----. In fact, I actually subverted to my own pressing requirements some of R----'s own arguments! The argument, of course, was with Her.