The Journal of a Disappointed Man

November 16. Arthur came down for the week end. He likes the Lady of Shalott. She is "not handsome, but arresting, striking" and "capable of tragedy." That I believe she has achieved already.... If she were a bit more gloomy and a bit more beautiful, she'd be irresistible. November 22. He: "Have a cigarette? I enjoy lighting your cigarettes." She: "I don't know how to smoke properly." He: "You smoke only as you could." She: "How's that?" H.: "Gracefully, of course." S.: "Do you think I like pretty things being said to me?" H.: "Why not, if they are true. Flattery is when you tell an ugly woman she is beautiful. Have you so poor an opinion of yourself to think all I say of you is flattery?" S.: "Yes. I am only four bare walls,--with nothing inside." H.: "What a deliciously empty feeling that must be. ... But I don't think you're so simple as all that. You bewilder me sometimes." S.: "Why?" H.: "I feel like Sindbad the Sailor." S.: "Why?" H.: "Because I'm not George Meredith." The title of "husband" frightens me. December 9. It's a fearful strain to go on endeavouring to live up to time with a carefully laid-out time-table of future achievements. I am hurrying on with my study of Italian in order to read the Life of Spallanzani in order to include him in my book--to be finished by the end of next year; I am also subsidising Jenkinson's embryological lectures at University College with the more detailed account of practical and experimental work in his text-book; I have also started a lengthy research upon the Trichoptera--all with a horrible sense of time fleeing swiftly and opportunities for work too few ever to be squandered, and, in the background, behind all this feverish activity, the black shadow that I might die suddenly with nothing done--next year, next month, next week, to-morrow, now!