Thursday 7 December 1933: 'I was walking through Leicester Sqre -- how far from China -- just now when I read Death of noted Novelist on the poster. And I thought of Hugh Walpole. But it is Stella Benson [...] I did not know her, but have a sense of those fine patient eyes; the weak voice; the cough; the sense of oppression. She sat on the terrace with me at Rodmell [Woolf's country residence]. And now, so quickly, it is gone, what might have been a friendship [reflects further on acquaintanceship with Benson] [...] How mournful the afternoon seems, with the newspaper carts dashing away up Kingsway "Death of Noted Novelist" on the placard [...] Why not my name on the posters?'