I wonder why I keep adding to this, oh,construction.

This higgledy-piggledy, slam-bang architecture of feelings… hopes, disappointments, terrors, joys, the lot. Is it because of the joys? The few I have? And the almost addictive need to express them? Then why do I keep dwelling on the bad scenes? Sometimes I think this isn’t worth the risk. If N. were ever to find you, Diary… Well, what could he do? After all!

Plenty.

He would, too. And not just to daddy.

Let’s face it, Virginia. He’s got you by the lady parts.

I feel… Today was the Bitch of Time. A bad one, yea, verily. It began on that marvelous self-generating morning note of hope, rising, raising the flesh really in a gorgeous thrill of beauty digging deep and a sense of much more under that, like Sutherland at the Met when she’s in top voice… Oh, stop drooling along like some ninny teen-ager rolling around in her first crush. At the age of twenty-five! And allegedly married.

The fact is I was on the upsurge, wanting, wanting to be alone with P., not daring even to look at him with that monstrous kipper of a Crump around watching with those fried eyes of his while that prissy mouth shapes those luscious “Madams” that sound as if he’s tasting me.

And old Editta with her red and squishy nose. I swear it twitched this morning when P. and I happened to nearly collide in the hall outside my dressing room. Or is that the hem of my guilt showing? To be afraid of a personal maid who can hardly utter an intelligible sentence in her own language, let alone mine!

I’m growing paranoid. The old soul’s probably coming down with the flu and wishing I’d bathe and undress myself for bed once. Editta cara, I wish I could.