Read Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932) for Free Online

"Three o'clock?" "No. At six." She smiled at him as she does at me. Then as we left she explained herself hurriedly. "He was very useful to me, very helpful. He is going to do a lot for me. I couldn't say no. I don't intend to go, but I couldn't say no."
    "You must go, now that you said yes," I said angrily, and then the literalness and stupidity of this statement nauseated me. I took June's arm and said almost in a sob, "I can't bear it, I can't bear it." I was angry at some undefinable thing. I thought of the prostitute, honest because in exchange for money she gives her body. June would never give her body. But she would beg as I would never beg, promise as I would not promise unless I were to give.
    June! There was such a tear in my dream. She knew it. So she took my hand against her warm breast and we walked, I feeling her breast. She was always naked under her dress. She did it perhaps unconsciously, as if to soothe an angry child. And she talked about things that were not to the point. "Would you rather I had said no, brutally, to the man? I am sometimes brutal, you know, but I couldn't be in front of you. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. He had been very helpful." And as I did not know what angered me, I said nothing. It was not a question of accepting or refusing a cocktail. One had to go back to the root of why she should need the help of that man. A statement of hers came back to me: "However bad things are for me I always find someone who will buy me champagne." Of course. She was a woman accumulating huge debts which she never intended to pay, for afterwards she boasted of her sexual inviolability. A gold digger. Pride in the possession of her own body but not too proud to humiliate herself with prostitute eyes over the counter of a steamship company.
    She was telling me that she and Henry had quarreled over buying butter. They had no money and..."No money?" I said. "But Saturday I gave you 400 francs, for you and Henry to eat with. And today is Monday."
    "We had things to pay up that we owed...."
    I thought she meant the hotel room. Then suddenly I remembered the perfume, which cost 200 francs. Why didn't she say to me, "I bought perfume and gloves and stockings Saturday." She did not look at me when she intimated they had the rent to pay. Then I remembered another thing she had said. "People say to me that if I had a fortune, I could spent it in a day, and no one would ever know how. I can never account for the way I spend money."
    This was the other face of June's fantasy. We walked the streets, and all the softness of her breast could not lull the pain.
    I went home and was very heavy in Hugo's arms. I said to him, "I have come back." And he was very happy.
     
    But yesterday at four, when I was waiting for her at American Express, the doorman said to me, "Your friend was here this morning and she said good-bye to me as if she were not coming back." "But we had agreed to meet here." If I were never again to see June walking towards me—impossible. It was like dying. What did it matter, all I thought the day before. She was unethical, irresponsible—it was her nature. I would not tamper with her nature. My pride about money matters was aristocratic. I was too scrupulous and proud. I would not change anything in June which was basic and at the root of her fantastic being. She alone was without fetters. I was a fettered, ethical being, in spite of my amoral intellect. I could not have let Henry go hungry. I accepted her entirely. I would not fight her. If only she would come and meet me for that last hour.
    I had dressed ritually for her, in the very costume which created a void between me and other people, a costume which was a symbol of my individualism and which she alone would understand. Black turban, old rose dress with black lace bodice and collar, old rose coat with Medici collar. I had created a stir as I walked, and I was lonelier than ever because the reaction was partly hostile, mocking.
    Then