1 June 1914 – 7 June 1914

Went to see the Irish Players in The Playboy. Sitting in front of me was a charming little Irish girl accompanied by a male clod with red-rimmed eyes like a Bull-terrier's, a sandy, bristly moustache like a housemaid's broom, and a face like a gluteal mass, and a horrid voice that crepitated rather than spoke. She was dark, with shining blue eyes, and a delightful little nose of the utmost import to every male who should gaze upon her. Between the acts, the clod hearkened to her vivacious conversation--like an enchanted bullock. Her vivacity was such that the tip of her nose moved up and down for emphasis and by the end of the Third Act I was captured entirely. Lucky dog, that clod! After the play this little Irish maiden caught my eye and it became a physical impossibility for me to check a smile--and oh! Heavens!--she gave me a smile in return. Precisely five seconds later, she looked again to see if I was still smiling--I was--and we then smiled broadly and openly on one another--her smile being the timorous ingénue's not the glad eye of a femme de joie. Later, on the railway platform whither I followed her, I caught her eye again (was ever so lucky a fellow?), and we got into the same carriage. But so did the clod--ah! dear, was ever so unlucky a fellow? Forced to occupy a seat some way off, but she caught me trying to see her thro' a midnight forest of opera hats, lace ruffles, projecting ears and fat noses. Curse! Left her at High Street Station and probably will never see her again. This is a second great opportunity. The first was the girl on Lundy Island. These two women I shall always regret. There must be so many delightful and interesting persons in London if only I could get at them.

Rushed off to tell R---- about my little Irish girl. Her face has been "shadowing" me all day.

A violent argument with R---- re marriage. He says Love means appropriation, and is taking the most elaborate precautions to forfend passion--just as if it were a militant suffragette. Every woman he meets he first puts into a long quarantine, lest perchance she carries the germ of the infectious disease. He quotes Hippolytus and talks like a mediæval ascetic. Himself, I imagine, he regards as a valuable but brittle piece of Dresden china which must be saved from rough handling and left unmolested to pursue its high and dusty destiny--an old crock as I warned him. By refusing to plunge into life he will live long and be a well preserved man, but scarcely a living man--a mummy rather. I told him so amid much laughter. "You're a reactionary," says he. "Yes, but why should a reactionary be a naughty boy?"

My ironical fate lured me this evening into another discussion on marriage in which I had to take up a position exactly opposite to the one I defended yesterday against R----. In fact, I actually subverted to my own pressing requirements some of R----'s own arguments! The argument, of course, was with Her. Marriage, I urged, was an economic trap for guileless young men, and for my part (to give myself some necessary stiffening) I did not intend to enter upon any such hazardous course, even if I had the chance. Miss ---- said I was a funk--to me who the day before had been hammering into R---- my principle of "Plunge and damn the consequences." I was informed I was an old woman afraid to go out without an umbrella, an old tabby cat afraid to leave the kitchen fire, etc., etc. "Yes, I am afraid to go out without an umbrella," I argued formally, "when it's raining cats and dogs. As long as I am dry, I shall keep dry. As soon as I find myself caught in the rain or victimised by a passion, I shan't be afraid of falling in love or getting wet. It would be a misadventure, but I am not going in search of one." All the same the discussion was very galling, for I was acting a part. ... The truth is I have philandered abominably with her. I know it. And now I am jibbing at the idea of marriage.... I am such an egotist, I want, I believe, a Princess of the Blood Royal.