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 me a detailed description of everything and everybody during the past days. In the beginning he assures me there was nothing to tell. His days were taken up with bathing, lazing, smoking, eating, and sleeping. But gradually I have extorted from him the fact that, on the whole, he leads quite a gay life. At the hotel where he dines he has made many friends, he plays croquet and tennis with young girls, and is invited to picnic and dinner parties.

He seems especially to cultivate the society of a widow and her two daughters.

When first he mentioned these young girls, it was with a certain restraint. He tried to give it the appearance that, with the best will in the world, he could not escape them. They worried his life out of him with invitations and with asking him to take part in all sorts of country amusements.

I was silly enough to show that I was jealous. This evidently amused him, and now he is always trying to put these damsels and their wonderful doings in front of my nose. I know of course it is only a joke, but it makes me miserable all the same, though I am too ashamed to admit it.

On the contrary I often ask him about his two little friends. At last he revenged himself in a way I did not at all like. He started talking about Erik, and insisted that he had all the time been jealous of him.