I daren’t go back to my parents either. They think I am still at Pau. My father—if he knew, if he understood—is capable of cursing me. He would turn me away. And how could I face his virtue, his horror of evil, of lying, of everything that is impure? I am afraid too of grieving my mother and my sister. As for … but I will not accuse him; when he was in a position to help me, he promised to do so. Unfortunately, however, in order to be better able to help me, he took to gambling. He has lost the money which should have served to keep me until after my confinement. He has lost it all. I had thought at first of going away with him somewhere—anywhere; of living with him at any rate for a short time, for I didn’t mean to hamper him—to be a burden to him; I should have ended by finding some way of earning my living, but I can’t just yet. I can see that he is unhappy at having to abandon me and that it is the only thing that he can do. I don’t blame him—but all the same he is abandoning me. I am here in Paris without any money. I am living on credit in a little hotel, but it can’t go on much longer. I don’t know what is to become of me. To think that ways so sweet should lead only to such depths as these! I am writing to the address in London which you gave me. But when will this letter reach you? And I who longed so to have a child! I do nothing but cry all day long. Advise me. You are the only hope I have left. Help me if you can, and if you can’t … Oh! in other days I should have had more courage, but now it is not I alone who will die. If you don’t come—if you write that you can do nothing for me, I shall have no word or thought of reproach for you. In bidding you good-bye, I shall try and not regret life too much, but I think that you never quite understood that the friendship you gave me is still the best thing in my life—never quite understood that what I called my friendship for you went by another name in my heart.

LAURA DOUVIERS

P.S. Before putting this letter in the post I shall make another attempt. This evening I shall go and see him one last time more. If you get this therefore it will mean that really … Good-bye, good-bye! I don’t know what I am writing.

Edouard had received this letter on the morning of the day he had left England. That is to say he had decided to leave as soon as he received it. In any case he had not intended to stay much longer. I don’t mean to insinuate that he would have been incapable of returning to Paris specially to help Laura; I merely say that he is glad to return. He has been kept terribly short of pleasure lately in England; and the first thing he means to do when he gets to Paris is to go to a house of ill-fame; and as he doesn’t wish to take his private papers with him, he reaches his portmanteau down from the rack and opens it, so as to slip in Laura’s letter.

The place for this letter is not among coats and shirts; he pulls out from beneath the clothes a cloth-bound MS. book, half filled with his writing; turns to the very beginning of the book, looks up certain pages which were written last year and re-reads them; it is between these that Laura’s letter will find its proper place.

EDOUARD’S JOURNAL

Oct.