The Collector

 As if the architects and builders would live in all the houses they built! Or could live in them all. It's obvious, it stares you in the face. There _must_ be a God and he _can't_ know anything about us.

 (Same evening.) I've been very mean with him all day. Several times he's tried to speak, but I've shut him up. Did I want him to bring me anything? I said, I want nothing. I am your prisoner. If you give me food I shall eat it to keep alive. Our relations from now on are strictly those of a prisoner and a warder. Now please leave me alone.

 Luckily I've plenty to read. He'll go on bringing me cigarettes (if he doesn't I shan't ask him for them) and food. That's all I want of him.

 He's not human; he's an empty space disguised as a human.

    _November 20th_

 I'm making him wish he never set eyes on me. He brought in some baked beans for lunch. I was reading on the bed. He stood for a moment and then started to go out. I jumped to the table, picked up the plate and hurled it at him. I don't like baked beans, he knows it, I suppose he'd been lazy. I wasn't in a temper, I just pretended. He stood there with the filthy little bits of orange sauce on his so-clean clothes and looking sheepish. I don't want any lunch, I snapped at him. And turned my back.

 I ate chocolates all the afternoon. He didn't reappear until supper-time. There was caviare and smoked salmon and cold chicken (he buys them ready-cooked somewhere)--all things he knows I like -- and a dozen other things he knows I like, the cunning brute. It's not the buying them that's cunning, it's just that I can't help being grateful (I didn't actually say I was grateful, but I wasn't sharp), it's that he presents them so humbly, with such an air of please-don't-thank-me and I-deserve-it-all. When he was arranging my supper-things on the table, I had an irresistible desire to giggle. Awful. I wanted to collapse on the bed and scream. He was so perfectly himself. And I am so cooped up.

 Down here my moods change so rapidly. All determination to do one thing one hour; all for another the next.

 It's no use. I'm not a hater by nature. It's as if somewhere in me a certain amount of good-will and kindness is manufactured every day; and it must come out. If I bottle it up, then it bursts out.

 I wasn't nice to him, I don't want to be nice to him, I shan't be nice to him. But it was a struggle not to be ordinary to him. (I mean little things like "that was a nice meal.") As it was I said nothing. When he said, "Will that be all" (like a butler), I said, "Yes, you can go now," and turned my back. He would have got a shock if he could have seen my face. It was smiling, and when he shut the door, I was laughing. I couldn't help it again. Hysteria.

 Something I have been doing a lot these last days. Staring at myself in the mirror. Sometimes I don't seem real to myself, it suddenly seems that it isn't my reflection only a foot or two away. I have to look aside. I look all over my face, at my eyes, I try to see what my eyes say. What I am. Why I'm here.

 It's because I'm so lonely. I have to look at an intelligent face. Anyone who has been locked away like this would understand. You become very real to yourself in a strange way. As you never were before. So much of you is given to ordinary people, suppressed, in ordinary life. I watch my face and I watch it move as if it is someone else's. I stare myself out.

 I sit with myself.

 Sometimes it's like a sort of spell, and I have to put my tongue out and wrinkle my nose to break it.

 I sit down here in the absolute silence with my reflection, in a sort of state of mystery.

 In a trance.

    _November 21st_

 It's the middle of the night. I can't sleep.

 I hate myself.

 I nearly became a murderess tonight.

 I shall never be the same again.

 It is difficult to write. My hands are bound. I've got the gag off.

 It all began at lunch. I realized that I was having to struggle not to be nice to him. Because I felt I must talk to someone. Even him. At least he is a human being. When he went away after lunch, I wanted to call him back to talk. What I felt was quite different from what I decided I should feel two days ago. So I made a new decision. I could never hit him with anything down here. I've watched him so much with that in mind. And he never turns his back to me. Besides, there's no weapon. So I thought, I've got to get upstairs and find something, some means. I had several ideas.

 Otherwise I was afraid I would fall into the old trap of pitying him.

 So I was a bit nicer at supper-time and said I needed a bath (which I did). He went away, came back, we went up. And there, it seemed a sign, specially left for me, was a small axe. It was on the kitchen window-sill, which is next to the door. He must have been chopping wood outside and forgotten to hide it. My always being down here.

 We passed indoors too quickly for me to do anything then.