You know, somehow I couldn't altogether believe that I would be home on Sunday…. It is not the worst that has happened. That would have been to be tied up in Bandol till May. I think, from the manner of the man at the Military Permit Office to-day, that there is no doubt the 19 Bedford Square people will give me a permit. The only trouble is the time it takes and the horrible worry it entails here with the police. For Paris is guarded against strangers with hoops of steel. However, all can be arranged. And having written and sent my doctor's page 161 chit to No. 19 and gone to the Commissaire for permission to remain here and permission to depart as early as possible, I must just see it through.

This has been a bad day—looking for a hotel all day—with “Do let us take a taxi, Katie!” and strange desires on M. L.'s part to go to hotels at about £1,000 a bed and £500 petit déjeuner. Finally, late this afternoon I was passing along the Boulevard St. Michel and saw this, at the end, next door to the Sorbonne. It is very quiet—trees outside, you know, and an extremely pleasant chiming clock on the Sorbonne même. Also next door there is the best looking bookshop I have ever seen—the best set out, with exquisite printing on all the window cards and so on. The hotel seems just what is wanted. Six francs for my room with déjeuner—a big square room with 2 windows, a writing table, waste-paper basket, two arm chairs, de l'eau courante, a low wooden bed with a head piece of two lions facing each other, but separated for ever, kept apart for eternity by a vase of tender flowers. There is also a white clock with three towers. It stands at six. But this is a fine room to work in. Immediately I came in I felt it and took it.

The people are quiet and simple, too, and the maid is pretty. The two armchairs, I have just observed, are very like pug-dogs, but that can't be helped.

Very well, until they let me come home I shall stay here and write. All the back of my mind is numbed. The fact that this can happen seems to me so dreadful….