them; or, more often, they were doomed
to perish at my hands or at hers. A troubled shyness would suddenly
eclipse her mirth; or I would be seized with a sense that my cheating
of fate was useless, and served only to make the fate more bitter. She
seemed to dread any growth of friendship, and to pull herself up
abruptly when she felt in danger of being carried away into a genuine
comradeship. I was swiftly responsive to such an attitude; again we drew
apart. Here is an extract from a letter which I wrote to Varvilliers:

"MY DEAR VARVILLIERS: The state of things here is absurd enough.
My cousin and I can't like, because we are ordered to love; can't
be friends, because we must be mates; can't talk, because we must
flirt; can't be comfortable alone together, because everybody
prepares our _tete-a-tete_ for us. She is in apprehension of an
amourousness which I despair of displaying; I am ashamed of a
backwardness which is her only comfort. And the audience grows
impatient; had the gods given them humour they would laugh
consumedly. Surely even they must smile soon, and so soon as they
smile I must take the leap; for, my dear friend, we may be
privately unhappy, but we must not be publicly ludicrous. To-day,
as we walked a yard apart along the terrace, I seemed to see a
smile on a gardener's face. If it were of benevolence, matters
may not advance just yet; if I conclude that amusement inspired
it, even before you receive this I may have performed my duty and
she her sacrifice. Pray laugh at and for me from your safe
distance; in that there can be no harm. I laugh myself sometimes,
but dare not risk sharing my laugh with Elsa. She has humour, but
to ask her to turn its rays on this situation would be too
venturous a stroke. An absolute absorption in the tragic aspect
is probably the only specific which will enable her to endure.
Unhappily the support of pure tragedy, with its dignity of
unbroken gloom, is not mine. I forget sometimes to be unhappy in
reflecting that I am damnably ridiculous. What, I wonder, were
the feelings of Coralie at the first attentions of her
big-bellied impresario? Did stern devotion nerve her? Was her
face pale and her lips set in tragic mode? Or did she smile and
yawn and drawl and shrug in her old delightful fashion? I would
give much to be furnished wi