If she says goodbye perhaps adieu. Adieu - like those old time songs she sang. Always adieu (and all songs say it). If she too says it, or weeps, I'll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She's mad but mine, mine. What will I care for gods or devils or for Fate itself. If she smiles or weeps or both. For me.

I'm no use to anybody,' I say. 'I'm a cérébrale, can't you see that?' Thinking how funny a book would be, called 'Just a Cérébrale or You Can't Stop Me From Dreaming'. Only, of course, to be accepted as authentic, to carry any conviction, it would have to be written by a man. What a pity, what a pity!

I long to be ... Like Other People! The extraordinary, ungetatable, oddly cruel Other People, with their way of wantonly hurting and then accusing you of being thin-skinned, sulky, vindictive or ridiculous.

It's funny, he said, have you ever thought that a girl's clothes cost more than the girl inside them?

And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?

Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.

Next week, or next month, or next year I will kill myself. But I might as well last out my month's rent, which has been paid up.