Possessed | Page 8

toward romantic
things that is wrong. Thousands of women just as pretty as I am never
place themselves in situations with men that are almost certain to lead
them into temptation. They will not start an emotional episode that may
easily, as they know quite well, have a dangerous ending. But I am
always ready to start, confident that my self-control will save me from
any immediate disaster. And so far it always has."

How earnestly Seraphine sounded her warning. I wrote down her words
and promised to heed them: "Remember, dear, that emotional desire
deliberately aroused in 'harmless flirtations' and then deliberately
repressed is an offense against womanhood, a menace to the health,
and a degradation to the soul."
* * * * *
Thursday night.
I am horribly sad tonight--lonely--discouraged. The doctor wants to
know about my married life, about my husband. Why was I unhappy?
Why is any woman unhappy? Because her love is trampled on,
degraded--the spiritual part of it unsatisfied. Women are made for love
and without love life means nothing to them. Women are naturally finer
than men, they aspire more strongly to what is beautiful and spiritual,
but their souls can be coarsened, their love can be killed. They can be
driven--they have been driven for centuries (through fear of men) into
lies and deceits and sensuality or pretence of sensuality.
The great tragedy of the world is sensuality, and it may exist between
man and wife just as much as between a man and a paid woman. I don't
know whether the Bible condemns sensuality between man and wife,
but it ought to. I remember a story by Tolstoy in which the great
moralist strips off our mask of hypocrisy and shows the hideous evil
that results when a man and a woman degrade the holy sacrament of
marriage. That is not love, but a perversion of love. How can God bless
a union in which the wife is expected to conduct herself like a wanton
or lose her husband? And she loses him anyway, for sensuality in a
man inevitably leads him to promiscuousness. I know this to my
sorrow!
Perhaps I am morbid. Perhaps I see life too clearly, know it too well. I
do not want to be cynical or bitter. Oh, if only those old days of faith
and trust could come back to me! When I think of what I was before I
married Julian I see that I was almost like a child in my ignorance of
the animal side of man's nature....

* * * * *
Friday.
Dr. Owen thinks my trouble is shell shock, but he is mistaken. I have
taken care of too many shell shock cases not to recognize the symptoms.
Can I ever forget that darling soldier boy from Maryland who mistook
me for his mother? "They're coming! They're coming!" he screamed
one night; you could hear him all over the hospital. Then he jumped out
of bed like a wild man--it took two orderlies and an engineer to get him
back under the covers. I can see his poor wasted face when the little
doctor came to give him a hypodermic. There he lay panting, groaning:
"Oh those guns! Oh those guns! They break my ears!" Then he sprang
up again, his eyes starting out of his head: "Look out, there! On the
ammunition cart! Look out, Bill! Oh my God, they've got Bill--my pal!
Blown him to hell! Oh, oh, oh!" and he put his head down and sobbed
like a woman. That is shell shock. I have nothing like that. I know what
I am doing.
* * * * *
There was a storm today with great crashing waves, then everything
grew calm under a golden sunset. I take this as a good omen. I feel
happier already. The infinite peace of Nature is quieting my soul. I love
the sea. I can almost say my prayers to the sea.
* * * * *
Saturday.
The swimming master pays me extravagant compliments every
morning when I splash about in the pool. I know my body is beautiful.
Thank God, I have never imprisoned it in corsets.
I love the exercises I do in my room every morning. They bring back
the play spirit of my childhood. When I get out of bed I slip into a loose
garment, then I lie on the floor and stretch my spine along the
carpet--it's wonderful how this exhilarates one. After that I take deep

breaths at the open window, raising and lowering my arms--up as I
draw my breath in, down as I throw it out. Then I lie down again and
lift my legs straight up, the right, the left, then both together. I do this
twenty times, resting between