I have spent a beastly day. My exhilaration has all evaporated now. I
have had no one to share it with me. Maurice and everyone is leaving me
discreetly alone, knowing I am supposed to be on my
honeymoon--Honeymoon!

I spent the afternoon waiting, waiting. And after tea when Alathea had
not arrived I began taking longer turns, walking up and down the broad
corridor, and at last I paused outside her room, and a desire came over
me to look in on it, and see how she had arranged it.

There was silence. I listened a moment, then I opened the door.

The fire was not lit, it all seemed cold and cheerless. I turned on the
light.

Except for the tortoise-shell and gold brushes and boxes I had had put
on the dressing table for her, there was not an indication that anyone
stayed there, none of the usual things women have about in their rooms.
One could see she looked upon it just as an hotel, and not a permanent
abode. There were no photographs of her family, no books of her own,
nothing.

Only the bracelets were on the table still in their case, and on looking
nearer, I saw there was a bottle of scent. It had no label, and when I
opened it I smelled the exquisite perfume of fresh roses that she uses.
Where does she get it? It is the purest I have ever smelt in my life.

I looked at the quaint little fourpost bed that I had found in that shop
at Bath, a perfect specimen of its date, about 1699, with the old deep
rose silk pressed over the shell carving.

I had an insane desire to open the drawers in the chest and touch her
stockings and gloves. I had a wild feeling altogether I wanted my love,
rebellious, unrelenting, anyhow! I just longed for her.

I resisted my stupidities and made myself leave the room, and then tried
to feel joy again in my leg.

Burton was turning on the lamps when I got back to the salon.

"There are rumours that something is going to happen, Sir
Nicholas,--talk of an Armistice I heard when I was out. Do you think
Foch will do it?"

But I know all these rumours and talks, we have heard them before, so
this did not affect me. I could feel nothing, as time went on, but a
passionate ache. Why, why must she be so cruel to me? Why does she leave
me all alone?

Alathea, I would never be so unkind to you. And yet I don't know, if I
were jealous and angry, as I suppose she is, I could of course be much
crueler.

Her Ladyship's maid had been given the day out by her mistress, Burton
informed me,