Mary Olivier: A Life · Book V · Chapter XXXV · Chapter 35 7

They were talking tonight about Richard and his wife. They said he wasn’t happy; he wasn’t in love with her.

He never had been; she knew it; yet she took him, and tied him to her, an old woman, older than Richard, with grey hair.

Oh well⁠—she had had to wait for him longer than he waited for me, and she’s in love with him still. She’s making it impossible for him to see me.

Then I shan’t see him. I don’t want him to see me if it hurts her. I don’t want her to be hurt.

I wonder if she knows? They know. I can hear them talking about me when I’ve gone.

… “Mary Olivier, the woman who translated Euripides.”

… “Mary Olivier, the woman Nicholson discovered.”

… “Mary Olivier, the woman who was Nicholson’s mistress.”

Richard’s mistress⁠—I know that’s what they say, but I can’t feel that they’re saying it about me. It must be somebody else, some woman I never heard of.