in my book tries to detach himself from Z.—and, still more, tries to detach her from himself.

Oct. 28th.—People are always talking of the sudden crystallization of love. Its slow decrystallization, which I never hear talked of, is a psychological phenomenon which interests me far more. I consider that it can be observed, after a longer or shorter period, in all love marriages. There will be no reason to fear this, indeed, in Laura’s case (and so much the better) if she marries Felix Douviers, as reason, and her family, and I myself advise her to do. Douviers is a thoroughly estimable professor, with many excellent points, and very capable in his own line (I hear that he is greatly appreciated by his pupils). In process of time and in the wear of daily life, Laura is sure to discover in him all the more virtues for having had fewer illusions to begin with; when she praises him, indeed, she seems to me really not to give him his due. Douviers is worth more than she thinks.

What an admirable subject for a novel—the progressive and reciprocal decrystallization of a husband and wife after fifteen or twenty years of married life. So long as he loves and desires to be loved, the lover cannot show himself as he really is, and moreover he does not see the beloved—but instead, an idol whom he decks out, a divinity whom he creates.

So I have warned Laura to be on her guard against both herself and me. I have tried to persuade her that our love could not bring either of us any lasting happiness. I hope I have more or less convinced her.

Edouard shrugs his shoulders, slips the letter in between the leaves of his journal, shuts it up and replaces it in his suit-case. He then takes a hundred-franc note out of his pocket-book and puts that too in his suit-case. This sum will be more than sufficient to last him till he can fetch his suit-case from the cloak-room, where he means to deposit it on his arrival. The tiresome thing is that it has got no key—or at any rate he has not got its key. He always loses the keys of his suit-cases. Pooh! The cloak-room attendants are too busy during the day-time and never alone. He will fetch it out at about four o’clock and then go to comfort and help Laura; he will try and persuade her to come out to dinner with him.

Edouard dozes; insensibly his thoughts take another direction. He wonders whether he would have guessed merely by reading Laura’s letter that her hair was black. He says to himself that novelists, by a too exact description of their characters, hinder the reader’s imagination rather than help it, and that they ought to allow each individual to picture their personages to himself according to his own fancy. He thinks of the novel which he is planning and which is to be like nothing else he has ever written. He is not sure that The Counterfeiters is a good title. He was wrong to have announced it beforehand. An absurd custom this of publishing the titles of books in advance, in order to whet the reader’s appetite! It whets nobody’s appetite and it ties one. He is not sure either that the subject is a very good one. He is continually thinking of it and has been thinking of it for a long time past; but he has not yet written a line of it. On the other hand, he puts down his notes and reflections in a little note-book. He takes this note-book out of his suit-case and a fountain pen out of his pocket. He writes:

I should like to strip the novel of every element that does not specifically belong to the novel. Just as photography in the past freed painting from its concern for a certain sort of accuracy, so the phonograph will eventually no doubt rid the novel of the kind of dialogue which is drawn from the life and which realists take so much pride in. Outward events, accidents, traumatisms, belong to the cinema.