June 1922

Randogne, Switzerland. I find the rapture at being alone hard to understand. Certainly when I am sitting out of sight under a tree I feel I could be content never to return. As to * fear,' it is gone. It is replaced by a kind of callousness. What will be, will be. But this is not a very useful statement, for I've never put it to the test. Should I be as happy with anyone at my side? No. I'd begin to talk, and it's far nicer not to talk. Or, if it were J. he'd open a little blue book by Diderot, Jacques le Fataliste, and begin to read it, and that would make me wretched. . . . Why the devil want to read stuffy, snuffy Diderot when there is this other book before one's eyes? I do not want to be a book worm. If its book is taken away from it, the little blind head is raised; it wags, hovers, terribly uneasy, in a void — until it begins to burrow again. Loneliness : * Oh Loneliness, of my sad heart be Queen ! ' It isn't in the least that. My heart is not sad except when I am among people, and then I am far too distracted to think about Queens. (Oh, dear! Here is a walking tragedy — Madame with a whole tray of food! And I begged for a bastick, only a bastick!)