The Collector

 It's useless just kissing him. I've got to give him such a tremendous shock that he'll have to release me. Because you can't very well imprison someone who's given herself to you.

 I shall be in his power. I couldn't ever go to the police. I should only want to hush it up.

 It's so obvious. It stares one in the face.

 Like a really good sacrifice at chess.

 It's like drawing. You can't nibble at a line. The boldness is the line.

 I thought out all the sex facts. I wish I knew a little more about men, I wish I was absolutely sure, that I didn't have to go on things heard, read, half understood, but I'm going to let him do what Piers wanted to do in Spain -- what they call Scotch love. Get me into bed if he wants. Play with me if he wants. But not the final thing. I'm going to tell him it's my time of the month, if he tries to go too far. But I think he'll be so shocked that I shall be able to make him do what I want. I mean, I'm going to do all the seducing. I know it would be a terrible risk with ninety-nine men out of a hundred, but I think he's the hundredth. He'll stop when I tell him.

 Even if it came to the point. He didn't stop. I'd take the risk.

 There are two things. One's the need to make him let me go. The other's me. Something I wrote on Nov. 7th -- "I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching." But I'm not being to the full at all. I'm just sitting and watching. Not only here. With G.P.

 All this Vestal Virgin talk about "saving yourself up" for the right man. I've always despised it. Yet I've always held back.

 I'm mean with my body.

 I've got to get this meanness out of the way.

 I've got sunk in a sort of despair. Something will happen, I say. But nothing will, unless I make it.

 I must act.

 Another thing I wrote (one writes things and the implications shriek -- it's like suddenly realizing one's deaf), "I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment."

 Therefore with generosity (I give myself) and gentleness (I kiss the beast) and no-shame (I do what I do of my own free will) and forgiveness (he can't help himself).

 Even a baby. _His_ baby. Anything. For freedom.

 The more I think about it the more I feel sure that this is the way.

 He has some secret. He must want me physically.

 Perhaps he's "no good."

 Whatever it is, it will come out.

 We'll know where we are.

 I haven't written much about G.P. these last days. But I think about him a great deal. The first and last thing I look at every day is his picture. I begin to hate that unknown girl who was his model. He must have gone to bed with her. Perhaps she was his first wife. I shall ask him when I get out.

 Because the first thing I shall do -- the first real positive thing, after I've seen the family, will be to go to see him. To tell him that he has been always in my thoughts. That he is the most important person I have ever met. The most real. That I _am_ jealous of every woman who has ever slept with him. I still can't say that I love him. But now I begin to see that it's because I don't know what love is. I'm Emma with her silly little clever-clever theories of love and marriage, and love is something that comes in different clothes, with a different way and different face, and perhaps it takes a long time for you to accept it, to be able to call it love.

 Perhaps he would be dry and cold when it came to it. Say I'm too young, he wasn't ever really serious, and -- a thousand things. But I'm not afraid. I would risk it.

 Perhaps he's in mid-_affaire_ with somebody else.

 I'd say, I've come back because I'm not sure any more that I'm not in love with you.

 I'd say, I've been naked with a man I loathed. I've been at bottom.

 I'd let him have me.

 But I still couldn't bear to see him sneaking off with someone else. Reducing it all to sex. I should wither up and die inside if he did.

 I know it's not very emancipated of me.

 This is what I feel.

 Sex doesn't matter. Love does.

 This afternoon I wanted to ask Caliban to post a letter to G.P. from me. Quite mad. Of course he wouldn't. He'd be jealous. But I so need to be walking up the stairs and pushing open the studio door, and seeing him at his bench, looking over his shoulder at me, as if he's not in the least interested to see who it is. Standing there, with his faint, faint smile and eyes that understand things so quickly.

 This is useless. I'm thinking of the price before the painting.

 Tomorrow. I must act _now_.

 I started today really. I've called him Ferdinand (not Cali-ban) three times, and complimented him on a horrid new tie. I've smiled at him, I've dutifully tried to look as if I like everything about him. He certainly hasn't given any sign of having noticed it. But he won't know what's hit him tomorrow.